The arterial road is so called because it is a complete failure as a place with quality of life. But of all the ugly arterial roads in the world, the Wasserburger Landstrasse in Munich is a very special El Dorado of misery. On her brutal circular saw-like path through the east of the city, she changes her name several times, as if she were in an identity crisis. Berg-am-Laim-Strasse first becomes Kreillerstrasse, then Wasserburger Landstrasse. The so-called main traffic axis, on which mainly the automobile commuter madness runs, is lined with the darkroom of kebab shops, betting providers, nail salons and car dealers. Incidentally, the SZ also lives in its perimeter. As does the author. In terms of urban space, the Magistrale crosses in several (not all) parts all circles of hell known from Dante’s “Inferno”. Architecturally, this terrifying suburbia borders on physical harm.
That’s why you breathe a sigh of relief when you meet the “Macherei” in the corner between Berg-am-Laim-Straße and Weihenstephaner Straße. In this respect, the architectural cooperation between three offices, which developed and recently completed the 26,400 square meter area as differentiated as a city within a city, should be awarded the Munich Lights Medal. The offices of HWKN Architecture (New York), Holger Meyer Architektur (Munich) and Ochs Schmidhuber Architekten (Munich) should be mentioned. Almost 75,000 square meters of space for offices, hotels, coworking, retail, fitness and gastronomy have been created, unfortunately once again without apartments, which, with a view of the surrounding dreariness, appear as pleasantly urbanizing as a piece of Manhattan in the Fichtelgebirge.
Interestingly enough, the reason for this reanimation – the city planners and the architects are to be thanked for this – is an architectural strategy that also could have what it takes to become pandemic in the future as a possible dominant cube cough virus. As a fashion trend, the Tetris strategy in construction is noticeable in many places. That is not undisputed. Which is absolutely correct in view of an architecture fad that, like all fads, calls fans and critics into action. You yourself, cycling through the infernal circles of the arterial road in Munich East every day, would like to embrace the machinations. Just for her ability not to look like goddamn East Munich in the middle of goddamn Munich East. Although the architecture is a bit tacky: as a strategy of differentiation, the whole thing was a success.
Like Tetris – only in reverse
The Tetris principle is known as a computer game in which you twist geometric shapes until they fit together perfectly. A smooth large form is created from multiple parts. The Macherei operates exactly the opposite: Here the alignment of the four differently accentuated buildings of the ensemble as well as their height lines are freed from any fitting accuracy. From a distance, the area, full of projections and recesses, risalits and cantilevers, is reminiscent of a collection of carelessly stacked building block structures erected by someone who was tired of aligning the edges.
A childlike fury can hardly be denied in the seemingly aimless handling of geometries and volumes. But this is exactly what creates – together with a roof that becomes noticeable as a heterogeneous roof landscape – a differentiated façade structure. Which is further supported by the use of different colored materials and textures as well as with the help of inter-spatial variance. The dissolved facades, which expand and condense in perspective, which are traversed by zones, squares and alleys, create a suggestive plasticity.
More than half a dozen cubes, stacked on top of each other, are to form the Candid Gate in Untergiesing.
(Photo: MVRDV)
Other examples also show that the dice fashion is virulent. In Untergiesing, for example, the non-existent “Candid-Tor” is being discussed. The 64 meter high structure on Candidplatz, located on the Mittlerer Ring, also met with enthusiastic approval and vehement rejection outside of the city planning commission. The design came from the Dutch architecture firm MVRDV, which is one of the co-inventors of the imposter architecture that has been passed around the world. In this case, more than half a dozen cubes, stacked on top of each other, would combine to form a gate-shaped, sculptural structure that has something fascinatingly dynamic about it. As some find. Or appears in danger of collapsing. As others note.
Anyone who asks connoisseurs of building history about the phenomenon of apparently randomly thrown but (ideally) precisely thought-out building block architecture will receive, for example, from Johannes Ernst von Steidle Architekten, the clever reference to a young primal mother of the box towers. It is the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, built according to plans by the Tokyo office SANAA. Since 2007, six symbolically stacked boxes, shifting them to create terraces or skylights, have been rising in Manhattan.
The New Museum of Contemporary Art was built according to plans by the Tokyo office SANAA.
(Photo: Massimo Borchi/imago images)
Anyone who recalls this structure, which is convincingly organized inside and out (and it is precisely this congruence of a meaningful gain in space that is important), suspects that Munich wants to play a bit of New York on the Mittlerer Ring. But isn’t this longing, which could also be a longing for seeing, justified? Apart from the member of parliament Robert Brannekamper, CSU, one can’t really think of anyone who would be trusted to prefer the Mittlerer Ring in Untergiesing to the Bowery in southern Manhattan.
As is always the case with architecture fads, and this is no different in the case of the Tetris design strategy, the question arises as to whether the trend is sustainable and makes sense – or just a trend as a gimmick and therefore possibly superfluous. Reference to “fashion” in architecture is usually accompanied by criticism, but it is also important to remember that all architectural styles, even Gothic, started out as fashion. It’s always about form inventions, innovations, interpretations – and in any case always about the realization that architecture, according to Lebbeus Woods, is the “most public of all arts”. Their show values, as well as what is either just a popular spectacle or is already a pacemaker of architecture, are therefore always discussed in public. The fact that some buildings are disputed is more an indication that they seem to have something challenging to argue about.
As a reminder: Adolf Loos’ manifesto-like writing “Ornament and Crime” is more than a century old. It is one of the founding documents of a modernism that, in the context of a rampant building decoration and excessive ornamentation, i.e. in historicism, is directed against too much confectionery in the building in a well-founded way. However, this disillusionment (and because ornaments cost money) not only brought forth classical modernism and its Bauhaus delight in the beauty of emptiness, but also caused a lack of form, a lack of ambition and yawning boredom.
When projects like Macherei or Candid-Tor advertise in different contexts for a reanimation of show values and spatial differentiation, it has a lot to do with the lack of urban architecture that has more to offer than the orderly tidiness of shoeboxes. Albert Einstein is said to have said “God doesn’t play dice”. Contemporary architecture is already throwing dice. Occasionally – but maybe also: still – one is grateful for that in the midst of the desolate North Korean nature of our urban deserts.