Munich: School opening a year late – Munich

13,112 girls and boys will be particularly excited this Tuesday in Munich. Now that the summer holidays are over, they can finally march to their new classes with their school bags. Most of them, 12,141 first graders, will attend one of the 142 public elementary schools over the next four years.

Older students will also be looking forward to the new school year with excitement. Above all, the 530 young people who will fill the newly built Riem high school with life for the first time on September 12th. This is later than initially planned because the school was actually supposed to open its doors last fall. But the effects of the corona pandemic, material and delivery bottlenecks as well as the conflicts in Ukraine caused the schedule to slip. The start in Riem was postponed – amid massive protests from parents.

Headmaster Günter Förschner can now smile about it: “In retrospect,” he says with a smile, “there was something good about us being in interim quarters on Schwanthalerstrasse. Now we appreciate the new building in a completely different way. We are happy and happy, to be able to start here now.” The students in the city center certainly learned a lot for life.

The Riemer Gymnasium is part of one of the most ambitious and modern school building projects in Munich. The Munich Spatial Development Company (MRG), a wholly owned subsidiary of the city, has undertaken what it calls itself a “mammoth project in times of crisis” with the Riem educational campus on an area of ​​32,000 square meters. In just under five years of construction, more than just two schools were built: the state high school for 1,500 children in the future and a new building for 900 students at the city’s Elly-Heuss secondary school, which is scheduled to open in 2024/25. Plus two large triple sports halls and two competition-sized swimming pools with height-adjustable lifting floors. But also a 40,000 square meter sports park, accessible from the educational campus via an underpass, which will also be available to clubs. Total costs: 252 million euros.

“This shows that we are taking the school construction program seriously,” said Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) at the official presentation of the high school. Munich wants to invest 7.84 billion euros in more than 100 construction projects; over the years, 61,000 school places in 131 schools, more than 200 sports halls, around 80 canteens and twelve swimming pools will be created. The fourth construction program was approved by the city council in December, and the fifth, with seven new projects at six locations, is announced for autumn.

When the high school in Riem starts on Tuesday with 20 classes from grades 5 to 9, it will also use some rooms from the neighboring secondary school. Recently there was major water damage, which is why two thirds of the building cannot be used for the time being.

Open detailed view

Apart from that, the school is well equipped. It is bright and spacious, with a large, open playground and many special features inside. Open-air classrooms, for example, which enable lessons in the open air when the weather is nice. “After all, we not only need something for the head, but also for the hand,” says headmaster Förschner. Or learning houses, in which four classrooms, a teacher team room and an inclusion room are grouped around a central center. This center, designed for self-organized work, can be viewed at any time thanks to glass doors. There are colorful bean bags, comfortable sofas, group tables and a flexibly adjustable standing desk for four people, internally called “Totem”.

“Definitely Bavaria’s largest bicycle garage”

The students should have six school hours per week in this central room to intensify what they have learned. All classrooms have whiteboards and projectors, and the 22 specialist classrooms are designed in such a way that the children can try out what the teacher shows for themselves at their tables. There is WiFi everywhere, an auditorium with high tables with bar stools and a teachers’ room with a table football table, a small pool table and two beach chairs. “But it’s not a gambling den, on the contrary,” emphasizes Förschner. “It was important to me to show my colleagues how much we value their work. They do a hard job and should like to come here and have fun sometimes. It’s about feeling good, having the chance to take a deep breath before it’s back to normal the lesson goes.”

And something else is unique in Riem: the mobility concept. Below the educational campus there is an underground bicycle parking garage with 850 spaces, accessible via a heated ramp in winter. “This is definitely Bavaria’s largest bicycle garage,” believes the mayor. “But it will still be exciting to see whether it will be enough when the school is fully occupied.”

Open detailed view

Riem is not the only major school construction project in Munich that was completed for the new school year. From the point of view of construction officer Jeanne-Marie Ehbauer, a “particularly impressive project” was the general renovation and expansion of the Oskar von Miller and Maximiliansgymnasiums in Schwabing over a good four years: “With a lot of care, creativity and skill, we were able to protect the monuments and the “to reconcile expanding school needs in an architecturally impressive way.”

The “Max” school family moved back into the old building last year, and now, like in Riem, a year late, it’s the turn of the “Oskar”. “We are really excited about the conversion and renovation,” says “Oskar” school principal Angelika Schneider. “Really great rooms” were provided in a building on Karl-Theodor-Straße that was specially designed for the natural sciences and in the converted attic of the old building – a total of 20 new classrooms. And an additional underground gymnasium under the school yard.