Die Macherei, the first LEED-GOLD neighborhood in Europe, was designed in collaboration between three architecture firms. Die Macherei comprises six multi-purpose buildings, including a new hotel, the Scandic München Macherei, a Coworking Building by Design Office, Retail as Amenity with a grocer, gym, restaurant, and bar and office space.
Global Design & Architecture Design Awards 2023
Second Award | Mixed Use (Built)
Project Name: Die Macherei
Category: Architecture: Mixed Use (Built)
Studio Name: HWKN
Area: 200,000 sqft
Year: 2022
Location: Munich, Germany
Consultants: N/A
Photography Credits: Klemens Renner
Architects: HWKN Architecture, OSA Ochs Schmidhuber, Holger Meyer Architektur
Client: Art-Invest & Accumulata
This place-shaping, new neighborhood transforms a once-barren, industrial area into a neighborhood that is welcoming, human, eventful, and filled with emotion. The Scandic München Macherei hotel, ten stories high like its neighbors, is clad in a rough, earthen-brown brick. The hotel is immediately unforgettable due to its stacked and sculpted façade. From a distance, the entire face of the hotel appears to be in motion, with individual folds rippling across the exterior.
Separated from the Scandic hotel by a new pedestrian canyon is a Gold’s Gym with offices above. Carving out this, and two additional, canyons was key to making the neighborhood more welcoming, and introducing a sense of place to the community beyond simply the new development. The main canyon leads to another office building and a public plaza, the facade of which is clad in the same glossy, red-to-orange brick as the sides of the canyon—an image of pure joy that draws people toward it.
The expressionistic use of brick is an homage to this area of Munich, once famous for making bricks, including those used in Munich’s fifteenth-century landmark, the Frauenkirche. More recently, an abandoned Temmler Pharmaceutical Factory stood on this site, fenced off from the neighborhood. Die Macherei’s open canyon of orange brick projects says: come, join us, live life. There is a new neighborhood here: small stores, coffee shops, and places to sit with your laptop.
Now, as Die Macherei opens, the full promise of that exciting creative moment is ready for everyone in this neighborhood to embrace and enjoy.
