There they are, two orange balloons, small but clearly visible in the glorious morning sky behind the southern roundabout of the castle. About two kilometers from Nymphenburg Palace, they hover at a height of 155 meters above the parcel post hall at the Friedenheimer Brücke, also at the point where an investor wants to build twin high-rise buildings of this height. This Wednesday, the balloons simulate for an hour and a half how the towers would die on the cityscape – although one must of course bear in mind that.
Gabriele Netzer stands at the edge of the castle pond, she looks over, and her look says: not a good idea about the towers. She finds densification in the city right, especially at a junction like the Friedenheimer Bücke, directly on the central railway axis. However, Netzer, an architect by profession, believes that it is wrong to put two separate towers of this height there. “There is simply no concept for high-rise buildings in Munich,” they say, sometimes here, sometimes there. “When I take the train to Frankfurt, it has a completely different effect, the high-rise buildings form a composition.” Another citizen of Munich stands next to her, he prefers to keep his name out of the public eye. He also offers the high-rise project. The two are exchanging arguments when Hans-Georg Stocker stops on his bike.
It is “a backward-looking debate”. He asks: “Should we perhaps also tear down the Olympic Tower?” Stocker had already spoken out clearly in favor of the construction project two weeks ago at an event on the subject of the “Parcel Post Area” and thus contradicted the large majority in the hall. He’s for the Houses, though the project WILL have an impact on his backstage as well. “Of course it is a threat to us when apartments come into the immediate vicinity,” says Stocker. And he understands any skepticism towards investors, “I’ve had a lot of bad experiences with the Backstage itself over the years.”
The two visible towers would be from afar.
(Photo: dpa)
Has he ever spoken to Ralf Büschl, the parcel post investor? Yes, says Stocker, Büschl and his people are open to ideas. “From our point of view, it must be guaranteed that the apartments are protected against noise and that we are not responsible for it.” In the meantime, the small group has grown, a dozen people are now standing together, the arguments fly back and forth.
City planning officer Elisabeth Merk is already on her way to the office. She was against them, took photos of the balloons with her cell phone and eight extended her time: “The visibility is as we estimated it.” Your planning department organized the simulation after the city council faction of the ÖDP and Free Voters (who rejected the construction project) had requested it. But Merk is also thinking about the arguments of the State Office for Monument Protection, whose boss Mathias Pfeil rejects the skyscraper plans, they would “change the city skyline like no other building”, he said some time ago, “you can see them from everywhere”, in particular the ensemble of Nymphenburg Palace would be seriously damaged.
Merk has strolled along the castle canal: “I have something extra: the view of the castle is untouched.” From their point of view, the decisive factor is the view of the others: “From the castle you have always been facing the city, so I consider the high-rise buildings to be fundamentally open to discussion from the point of view of monument preservation.” But, she adds, the visibility of the balloons is “proof that the architecture of the towers must be really good”.
A little earlier in the morning, on the platform of the S-Bahn stop at Friedenheimer Brücke. Here you are very close to the huge, listed arch of the parcel post hall. But the balloons are pretty high up. Here the towers would develop an enormous presence – which some would probably find overwhelming, others a metropolitan area. A few years ago the 60 meter high office tower “Kap West” was built here. Out at the bottom comes Kai Ludwig, 40, he works inside at an IT company. Ludwig leans his head back to see the balloons. “It doesn’t seem so bad to me, I would have imagined it to be much higher,” he says. “And it would be good for the city if there was a little more life here in the corner.”