A few years ago, stilt houses were seen as Munich’s answer to the housing shortage and skyrocketing rents. The idea is to further compact areas that are already sealed and build quickly and cheaply. Inexpensive apartments with a simple standard were to be built in elevated buildings above parking spaces.
As part of the “Living for All” program, the city had the first two facilities built at Dantebad: the prototype with 100 apartments on Postillonstrasse in record time in 2016, and 144 units above the parking lot at Reinmarplatz by 2022. The municipal retirement home provider Münchenstift and Münchner Wohnen are currently preparing to build 56 company apartments above the employee parking lot on Rümannstrasse. It should be ready at the beginning of 2027. Otherwise it has become quiet around the stilt houses.
Now Simone Burger (SPD) has brought the topic out of obscurity in the planning committee. It’s about a municipal property including parking areas at Candidplatz in Untergiesing. The city councilors had already decided in 2018 that a feasibility study should explore what can be done with the area. The daycare center and youth center will continue to exist, and additional housing, retail and offices will be accommodated. But nothing has happened so far – because of the corona pandemic, a lack of employees and a lack of budget resources, as the planning department listed.
The project must now finally be “taken seriously,” demanded Burger in the committee. Giesing needs affordable housing, and a stilt building could be a quick solution. However, Brigitte Wolf (Die Linke) doubted whether living there was even possible. It is “one of the loudest places in the city”.
Jörg Hoffmann (FDP) suggested developing the urban area together with the planned investor project opposite: A new entrance for the medical and office center there is planned on the island property between Candidstraße and Mittlerer Ring, the “Candid Gate”. The design envisages a 64 meter high office building, the individual elements stacked on top of each other like cubes.
The project by the real estate companies Values Real Estate from Hamburg and Ehret and Klein from Starnberg received a mixed response from the urban design commission at the end of 2021, and the rejection in the district itself was quite unanimous. So far there is only the controversial draft; a development plan process has not yet started.
And it will stay that way for the time being, for capacity reasons. There should be master plans for both areas, the municipal one with the parking lot and the Candid Gate, said city planning officer Elisabeth Merk in the planning committee, but in separate procedures. The department has to set priorities: “I can’t conjure people up.”
The prototype: The stilt house above the parking lot on Postillonstrasse was built within a year.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
Progress with the stilt houses is now only progressing slowly. In retrospect, the prototype from 2016 turns out to be a positive exception; it was finished after a year. In the meantime it’s taking time. The planning department has its sights set on the visitor parking lot at the forest cemetery for another project. However, it must first be checked whether residential development there is compatible with the planned tram west tangent. And that will only be possible once the tram is in operation: 2028 at the earliest.