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project 19 / 25.09.2000

One Two Free

Client: Baureferat und Kulturreferat der Landeshauptstadt Munich
e-mail: peter-haimerl@urbnet.de
Collaboration: Florian Wurfbaum, Christian Schuberth
Statics: Thomas Beck Completion: August 2000
Location: Pedestrian subway at the junction of the Altstadtring (Karl-Scharnagl-Ring) and Maximilianstraße

Project presentation: Hannes Schelbert, 3. Dimension, Büro für dreidimensionale Gestaltung
Sound technician: Jacob Marquart, M-Events

There is a certain tristesse inherent in a pedestrian subway per se. Its existence alone is indicative of an unsatisfactory situation in a city, a situation where mobility and normal walking speed have failed to be combined in a fruitful manner. Where whoever is faster has the right of way, those on foot are banned underground. And here - where the lighting is usually poor, the walls are rough and the ceiling is low - is not that kind of public space which invites people to dwell in for any length of time. But shabby situations occasionally develop a strange intensity.
For architects, this can be a provocation; how to reclaim the authenticity of the usual without prettifying it and levelling it down to an inoffensive banality. So that a place is created whose oppressive fascination is completely transformed into an attraction beyond the kind of small-talk architecture which seems to reproduce itself automatically in both inner cities and suburbs.

Traffic junction
Around thirty years ago, a traffic belt was placed around the city center of Munich but, in places, exerted a stranglehold on the city - along the exclusive boulevard of Maximilianstraße, for example, where the ring road cuts right through the axis of Maximilianstraße with its showrooms, galleries, studio theatres and the national theatre. A pedestrian subway and a traffic-light crossing have not been able to prevent the ebbing away of a promenading public beyond the flow of traffic.

Basement
The pedestrian subway, at a place where the traffic flow cuts Maximilianstraße in two, is the relict of plans for an unconstructed tunnel under the old city ring road at this junction. With a total area of 1700 square metres, walls with tiles in light blue the color of a swimming pool, light-emitting steles which radiate a yellowish neon light and 4 closed-down escalators, it was neither suitable for reunifying the divided streets nor was it a sufficiently attractive exit from the magnificent street. This was probably why consideration was given to how this road basement could be upgraded into a public area: at some time, a niche was created, surrounded with glass and then used to display art.

Place of art
For it to become a real place for art, the Bau- und Kulturreferat (public buildings and cultural office) of the city of Munich engaged the architect Peter Haimerl. A gallery in a public area, officially entitled Maximiliansforum (Maximilian's forum=) which can function autonomously without supervisory personnel was the desired objective. It should also be possible to conduct parties there, for example. In other words, the city was open to suggestions. Peter Haimerl's projects are called Streichelwand, IMI-BOB or Mimesis and are all as astonishing as one would wish for an area for art. A type of underground space for returning art into the midst of life and also for reanimating art and nightlife. A pedestrian subway as an art room, as a night bar!

Concept
The concept appears quite succinct. To liberate the space of its various old fittings, to introduce four large steel frames with panes of glass as moving gates dividing up the space and to paint it in a cool tile-blue color. To replace the yellowish glimmering neon tubes of the light steles with those emitting a cold white light, thus intensifying the coolness of the light-blue tiles, and to add a variable tube system on the ceiling. Yellow glass prisms at the road junction mark out the stairs descending into the basement. One-two-free is the name which Haimerl gave to his concept and it also represents what the space is meant for. The four monumental swing doors with a length of 6.90 metres and a height of 2.90 metres each are freely pivoted, can be swung by hand and allow the space to be divided up in the following different ways.

One: One large interconnected exhibition area in the middle of the pedestrian subway with a floor area of around 800 square metres and two display windows each 20 metres long. Pedestrians can pass on both sides of the exhibition area.

Two: Two diametrically opposite exhibition rooms, each of which with approximately 250 square metres of exhibition space. Pedestrians can pass on both sides of the exhibition area and can cross the area through the open space between the two exhibition areas.

Free: The whole area is open and accessible: suitable for events, parties, nightlife...

Belle Etage
On the occasion of the Munich Open Art weekend, the basement was endowed with the title "belle etage" and served as an exhibition area for media art. In the evenings, electronic film extracts, flickering on the glass surfaces of the gates, were supplemented by bars and the sound of a Munich night club. It is quite likely that no other gallery was so well visited as the belle etage in the subway during the night and the early hours of the morning. The successful experiment is therefore to become a regular institution: once a month, art, DJs and barkeepers will make the Maximiliansforum in Munich into an underground location.

Text: Michaela Busenkell

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