MUCA

The complex belongs to the municipal energy operator and is located in the heart of Munich’s center. It used to host the transformers and the turbine of one of Munich’s energy plants. It is located next to a WWII bunker and it consists of two overlaying halls and additional spaces for offices and other facilities. As a temporary function for the few seven years, the building hosts a museum for street art and a lounge for the architecture magazine AIT.It is a meeting place for artist and architects to host meetings, presentations and exhibitions.
Following the aim of reducing the amount of interventions and of striving for simplicity, together with lbgo Architekten we developed a concept that avoids invasive transformations and adapts functions to the building’s capacities. The different zones where shaped around the comfort conditions that the building is able to provide: in the exhibition area, the ventilation is natural, heating is provided by radiators that are connected to the district heating. The building was not equipped with an additional thermal insulation as this measure could highly compromise the appearance and the thermal behavior in summer. Furthermore, thermal insulation requires an embodied energy demand that is higher than the additional required operational energy for heating during the temporary use of the building. The hall uses its high amount of thermal mass to shift the loads. In the basement, due to its function, a high fresh and dry air demand is guaranteed by a mechanical ventilation unit combined with a new adobe plaster that regulates humidity peaks. In the development of an energy and climate engineering strategy, the effect of materials with their thermal storage capacity and their physical properties has been evaluated and verified through simulation tools.
All proposed interventions and mechanical systems are reversible and can be disposed after the temporary use. These design decisions were informed through a holistic evaluation process that allows the simultaneous consideration of energy efficiency and embodied energy in context of defined indoor environmental qualities.