13/08/2026
Architecture Smartvoll
Visualization Play-Time
Schwabing-West is keeping one of its 1970s apartment blocks. Kathi stays standing and will be reworked rather than replaced. Next to it, on top of a commercial hall that is already on the site, a timber building called Theo goes up. The two together make a small mixed quarter: flats, workspaces, room for cultural use, and places where people actually run into each other.
The starting point is that the existing buildings are worth something. The 1970s architecture stays and is extended, with apartment layouts brought up to date. Floor plans open up, daylight and ventilation improve, and there is shared outdoor space the old building never had. Residents get most of that. The neighbourhood gets some of it too.
Ecologically, the site changes quite a bit. Sealed surfaces are broken up and planted. Roofs are rebuilt to support plants and insects. Building components that are still sound go back into use where they can. And because the structure stays, so does the embodied energy already in it, which is a large share of what a demolition would throw away, along with the CO2 a rebuild would emit.
Transformation instead of demolition. That is the argument: the building already standing is where the project gets its material, its structure and most of its carbon savings.
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