Lack of space in Munich: How artists help themselves – Munich

The entrance area features dark wood paneling. Cables hang from the ceiling, a wrapped picture leans against the wall. On one pane is an old lettering in golden letters: “Henrik Kuszner Röcke Hosen blouses GmbH”. The textile factory of the same name on Streitfeldstraße was given up years ago. Even if it looks that way at first glance: This is not just another story about vacancies in the middle of the city, but about an extraordinary cooperative project.

Everything started ten years ago. At a time when no major real estate developer was interested in the east of Munich, artists made a vacant industrial property in a commercial area in Berg am Laim usable for living and working and bought the building with leasehold rights. In the year of the birthday, the comrades from Streifeldstraße would have liked to have set another milestone for their cooperative, but the project they had come up with surprisingly failed – even if not buried.

Open detailed view

Open detailed view

Open detailed view

Simple workplaces, shelves on the wall, a large window front. No creative chaos, more functionality. The office of Kunstwohnwerke eG in the front building of the site is more like the interior of a government agency than what outsiders might imagine as a studio building. This may be mainly due to the unadorned reinforced concrete skeleton construction of the 1970s building and the fact that its original purpose was quite different. On the one hand there are the administration rooms, on the other hand the factory hall with the load-bearing floor for heavy sewing machines. The stairwell with the dark-coated freight elevators is also almost true to the original.

Open detailed view

“In the beginning it was a problem for me how it looks here. It doesn’t correspond to the romanticism of the artists,” says Uwe Oldenburg. The visual artist is a member of the board of the cooperative, which has set itself the goal of creating affordable spaces in which Munich artists can work permanently. “There’s a lot of pressure when you go from temporary use to temporary use,” he says. He himself used to work on Dachauer Strasse – where a new district called Kreativquartier will soon be built and where artists and creative people have been working on their ideas for two decades. They do and have always done so with fixed-term leases. Little planning security, rising prices: That was the decisive factor for a handful of artists to join forces to form Kunstwohnwerk in 2007 and go looking for houses in the city area. “At the time we looked at the clothing factory, there wasn’t much here – no contemporary art,” says Oldenburg, pointing in the direction of Streitfeldstrasse, “colleagues and friends asked at the time: ‘What do you want abroad?'”.

Old brownfield sites are becoming hip offices

Anyone who looks around the neighborhood of the textile factory today is faced with another question: Who else comes here? The so-called Macherei will soon be opening at the end of Streitfeldstraße. A new commercial area on the site of the former pharmaceutical company Temmler. There is a deep hole next to the backyard of the Kunstwohnwerke. The architecture and lifestyle publisher Callwey is building its new company headquarters there. A few houses away, another new office block has been built in place of the Hawe hydraulics factory. And there are more and more: “The Run” and the “Streitfeldlofts” on Neumarkter Strasse or the temporary furnished apartments on Levelingstrasse. Berg am Laim is no longer an unloved Vietrel, the old industrial area not far from the Leuchtenbergring is rapidly changing into an office and service location.

Right in the middle, that’s where the artists live and work, “the first gentrifiers, as our architect said the other day,” says Oldenburg, while walking up the steps to one of the few studio apartments in the building. There, Monika Reinhart opens the door. Your work-living combination extends across the entire width of the building. On the right is the large, light-flooded eat-in kitchen, on the wall a loft bed with an integrated bookshelf. On the left a similarly sized workroom. Large-format canvases hang on the wall there, with fine layers of paint applied to them. Pastel shades blend into each other, darker nuances shine through underneath. “I’m preparing exhibitions right now, so I don’t have all the paintings here,” she says.

Affordable studios are rarely priced in, even in new districts

Every member has to buy at least one share in the cooperative if they want to live or work in the 3,000 square meter studio building in Streitfeld. In addition, there is a usage deposit of EUR 330 per square meter used and a monthly rent of EUR 6.80 per square meter, excluding ancillary and operating costs. The city has rented a sponsored studio in the complex, the Genius Loci art association maintains three other studios for young artists and operates an exhibition space, and the Metropoltheater is trying out a stage in the Kreativhaus. After ten years in operation, demand is unbroken. “We have 160 members, but only 45 are housed here,” says Stefan Schneider. The musician is also part of the board of directors of Kunstwohnwerke. He teaches and rehearses with his son in a soundproof room in the back building. The statutes of the cooperative state that its goal is to create more jobs, he says.

Open detailed view

The members on the waiting list cannot be put off indefinitely. That’s not the plan either, says Schneider, who grew up in Ramersdorf and still knows the eastern outskirts of the city as the approach lane for Riem Airport. Recently, the comrades thought they had reached their goal. “An advertisement in the creative district seemed tailor-made to us,” he says. A concept for a new “Agora House” on Hessstrasse was conceived together with the architects Florian Wurfbaum and Jürgen Mrosko, who also have their offices in the building: a hybrid building for living, working and meeting people. Participatory forms of living for different user groups, temporary or long-term, should find space there, as well as areas where people can try things out, play theatre, hold a concert or eat. Incidentally, Monika Reinhart’s working home was the inspiration for the residential studios in the new building. As a “Monika model”, the connection between artistic work and living in a small space in the new Agora house was to be implemented.

“The rooms on the ground floor could be used differently in the morning than in the evening. We even had an important cooperation partner in the Pfennigparade,” says Chairman Uwe Oldenburg. Had, because in the end it was not enough for the contract, despite praise from the municipal evaluation commission for the new operator concept. The construction site in the creative district went to another cooperative. The Kunstwohnwerke plans shouldn’t disappear in a drawer, but “we hope to find another similar site or a building that we can convert according to these ideas,” says Oldenburg, who is reluctant to put off those who are waiting any longer. He hopes it won’t be too long before the cooperative can announce its next milestone.

Atelierhaus Streitfeld celebrates its tenth anniversary in Berg am Laim on Saturday, June 25th and Sunday, June 26th. On both days between 1 p.m. and 7 p.m., 30 artists open their workshops and show their works. The open studio days are accompanied by a supporting program of readings, music, performances and cabaret. At the same time, another cultural institution in the district – the Bürgerkreis – is celebrating its 40th anniversary and is opening the exhibition rooms in the Baum 20 neighborhood meeting place on Baumkirchner Strasse between 1pm and 5pm. On Saturday, June 25, from 7 p.m., there will also be a jazz concert by the musician Kilian Sladek in the parish hall of St. Michael at Johann-Michael-Fischer-Platz 1. For children, the traditional children’s festival starts on Saturday at 2 p.m. on the fairground on Sankt-Veit-Straße. Around 6 p.m., the maypole association will light a bonfire there. On Sunday, June 26, in the afternoon, the stage in the Behrpark will be occupied by the Artanos theater group, the BlechMucer brass band and the Acoustic Band Tenderly disorder recorded. Admission is free.