At the end there is still time for questions after the hour and a half during which five men talk a lot. They advertise what is to be built in Neuhausen: a house with apartments and offices. When a property developer invites you to a press conference in Munich, it is often an advertising event. And so there is a breakfast buffet and a project brochure in a cotton bag made of strong material for the journalists, who are looked after by friendly PR people. “Vincent” is printed on it.
The Bauwerk company is building 56 apartments and offices for 400 workplaces. “Green ecology was yesterday. The megatrend of tomorrow is blue,” says the invitation, “because blue ecology will not decouple technical progress and environmental protection from one another.” The place of homage to the project is the Mercedes Tower, at the very top. Cars are sold underneath, you can see Arnulfstrasse, Donnersbergerbrücke, Landshuter Allee, many moving and stationary cars and the construction site on the corner of Rupprechtstrasse and Gabrielenstrasse in the St. Vinzenz quarter, where an old parking garage is currently being demolished. A wood hybrid building is to be built there, with a lot of vegetation on the facade.
Contrary to the “megatrend”, the plants will probably thrive in old green. They should do this in clever, large plant troughs in which the water stands under a metal lid so that the roots never thirst and maintenance is easy. Roderick Rauert, one of the Bauwerk bosses, says in a small group that he liked to garden, tried the water-saving system at home on the balcony and terrace, and that it even works for his wife, even though she doesn’t have a green thumb. Nevertheless, strawberries are now growing at home with the Rauerts. A “soup” is already forming in the bottom, but: not that bad.
In their one and a half hours, the five men – property developers, project managers, architects, trend researchers – rave about what they have come up with and will build by 2024. Your words are big: New Dimension. Incredible. Phenomenal. The bottom line is that the three-part building sits three floors deep in the ground, because the old parking garage would have to be replaced with an underground car park. When it comes to demolition, they want to recycle as much concrete as possible, and later build and equip them in a way that conserves resources. Wood stands for the “trend topic of sustainability”, and it accounts for 25 percent of the building.
Tristan Horx, son of the trend researcher family, outlines in a “keynote” “megatrends” and living trends, the latter in five theses, for example: “Work is becoming more flexible, work / life blurring.” Or: “A future in abundance awaits us. Intelligent waste”. He likes the “blue ecology” because he combines the green with equations like “future = scarcity”. Wrong, he says: “System technology is the solution”. While Horx is in the future, a journalist’s spoon rattles softly, and chocolate dessert is served with sandwiches. Horx, back in the present, says that vodka can now be made artificially, he likes that. “If necessary, we’ll just drink the world nicely.”
Money was not an issue for an hour and a half, then Jürgen Schorn, the other Bauwerk owner, asks the question before a journalist puts it: What does it cost? Answer: The cheapest apartment 659,000 euros, you get two rooms and 40 square meters. The most expensive with 200 square meters costs 3.3 million, the square meter prices start at 12,400 euros. And where do they end? At 20,000 euros. A lot of money, they also say at Bauwerk, but add that other providers in this area are charging up to 28,000 euros. And no, you don’t build apartments for the nurses so praised in Corona times. Incidentally, and this is what everyone on the Munich market says, it is not the property developers who are to blame, but the land prices. One is, says Schorn, “trapped in the market of property prices”.
Because of the climate, the building is built with a tree. Then why only 25 percent wood content? This is due to the underground car park, which has to be concreted, and the soundproofing between the apartments, says architect Ludwig Wappner and then explains that you shouldn’t think so negatively: “You have to connote it positively.” This is followed by the builder Schorn, who sees himself, his team and the hybrid ensemble very positively. For them it is not so much about making money on this project, rather they want to move forward and dare to do new things. “We started walking. We want to be the first mover.”