Great Opera
A PLACE FOR EVERYONE
Bachelor's Thesis B.Sc. Landscape Architecture and Planning, Summer Semester 2014
Topic
Max-Joseph-Platz is located in the northern part of Munich's old town on the edge of the pedestrian zone. The classicist square is characterized by the buildings of the residence, the national theater and the arched hall of the former Palais Törring-Jettenbach. With the Bavarian State Opera, the Residence Museum and the Bavarian State Theater, the square is home to three top-class cultural institutions. Around the square you will find high-quality retail, hotels and restaurants. Bus tourists, opera-goers, cyclists, theater-goers, high-end shoppers, inline skaters, sun-worshippers, and many others meet on the square. Variety of uses is in itself a positive feature of an urban square. At Max-Joseph Platz, however, the different interests seem to play against each other. Above all, the different road users keep getting in each other's way, despite the spacious dimensions of the square. The conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists in the so-called “Radlfurt” on Residenzstrasse are a much-discussed area of conflict. Max-Joseph-Platz only seems to function as a place to stay if it is closed to all other uses during the annual open-air event "Opera for All".
Task
As part of their bachelor theses, landscape architecture students should develop proposals for the design of the square. The first task was to penetrate the historical, architectural and sociological complexity of the square in a joint analysis phase. Furthermore, concepts should be developed that allow the different user groups to work together against each other. Particular importance was attached to solving the traffic problem and dealing with the underground car park underneath the square. These ideas were to be worked out into a spatial design for Max-Joseph-Platz and the adjoining street spaces. It was also possible to translate central elements of the design into an experimental performance and to develop them as an artistic intervention on the square.
Supervision
Prof. Regine Keller, Dipl.-Ing. Felix Metzler Dipl.-Ing. Felix Lüdicke
