citylikeyou — Massmann Wohnheim — Munich by Alexandra Gerber

Munich / Place

I have been accepted as guest in a community house for students.One hundred people live here, most of them are here since ages and have never moved out. And indeed, sometimes I felt like in a cruise boat where if I wanted I could have spend months in without needing to go out. This place is almost like a city in the city, where you get a daily backer delivery, where the fridges are always refilled with beers, and a massive bank of films and music is available through the intranet network. Everything is organised. For that they have some in house politics, ruled by “democraticaly” elected ministers. So you have the plant minister, the kitchen minister, the toilet-paper minister, the cooking-herbs minister…I know it sounds silly but it is very serious for them. I see that as a very typical German place. Somehow.

Address
Massmann Wohnheim, Maßmannstraße 77, Munich, Germany

Designer

Current city: London

Other cities: Munich

gmail.com

For the last six months, I have been a strange tourist in Munich. I came here to work in a studio and had not so much time to visit it properly. But I partly came in Germany because I was interested in its specific creative approach: it’s precision and rigorousity. In it’s system culture in a way. And indeed it’s a very intellectual society, ruled by color codes and order. It was definitely funny to see that these things are visible in many daily aspects of life. Or maybe it’s just me wanting to see them… Very soon, I will move to London - where I would like to do some freelance work, in product, furniture and space design.

More Places in Munich 12

Munich / Museum

Living here in Munich, i could sense how the BMW industry has a massive impact on the region (regarding that third of the people i met are studying or have a job linked to cars or machine-industry). By curiosity for this atypical fact, i forced my visit to the “BMW World”, which combines a museum, a platform for clients and sort of a touristic center hold by the group. As I could imagine it is all extremely overdone and slick, but once you got over that, I really enjoyed my visit. It is such a fascinating world. Before that I haven’t quite realised how much this industry is the future.The technologies, the materials, the quality, everything is such more advanced. The best thing to look at is for me the crazy LED-lighthouses. For the first time i thought that the yellow bulb was definitely old school.

Munich / Club

The Bahnwärter Thiel is an open air techno club and music venue filled with graffiti-ed containers, art installations and even a train coach. Think ‘colorful vibrant DIY apocalyptic steam punk’

Munich / Attraction

The White Rose was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany which was led by five students (and one professor) in front of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. The ‘monument’ isn’t really a monument. The leaflets show up as tiles embedded in the pavement in front of the university, and commemorate the movement brilliantly. Poignant and moving.

Munich / Museum

Just by walking through the column range you can sense what power means. A feeling that increases once you step in : everything is constructed so solid and out of proportions. But if you go on the back side of the building, this general impression will be disturbed. Looking up, you will notice that the stone columns are reinforced by bamboos fixed by Chinese vases. The hole facade looks like it is doing some exercise...It’s looks so funny. (actually, whilst invited for an exhibition Ai Wei Wei did judge that the building seems to fall apart and that it needs a bit of reinforcement...) I love it.

Munich / Bridge

I'm partial to this spot because I lived right across it for over a year and owe several beautiful evenings to it. Grab a beer or a gluhwein (depending on what time of the year you've landed here) from either of the two kiosks, each at the ends of this bridge, walk from the side closer to humboldtstrasse down to the river and read a book, cycle along the river, have a picnic on a lush green spot with friends or just bask in the sun. Or do none of these and soak in the view from the bridge.