“We are moving into a new era”: Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, visits Neuperlach
September 2024. “We had this big idea for a New European Bauhaus – but the idea only works if it is enlivened from the ground up. It is overwhelming to me to see that this is actually happening”, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen enthused during her visit to Neuperlach. Since October 2022, in Munich’s southeastern district, the lighthouse project “Creating NEBourhoods Together” has provided the framework for the creation of beautiful, environmentally friendly and sustainable neighbourhoods in the spirit of the New European Bauhaus (NEB), in a collaboration involving residents and representatives from the administration, businesses and the academic community.
She had hoped that people would be swept up by the idea of making the Green Deal observable and palpable through the European NEB initiative. “But it would never have been a feasible plan without the creativity of people who get involved and who are ready to follow this new road. People who want the way we build, the way in which we live together, to improve. I had hoped it would happen. But it is happening much more broadly than I would ever have thought possible.”
The heart of the New European Bauhaus beats in Neuperlach as well
The Commission President was greeted by the Third Mayor of the City of Munich, Verena Dietl. She was pleased to welcome Ursula von der Leyen to Neuperlach and to show her the development of the district through the European-funded “Creating NEBourhoods Together” project. “We are very proud to have the New European Bauhaus project here in Munich. You can see that the heart of the EU beats in the communities as well.”
There followed a short introduction to “Creating NEBourhoods Together” and to the participating administration, academic and business institutions, which was given by the three founding partners Prof. Dr. (Univ. of Florence) Elisabeth Merk, Chief Planner of the City of Munich and Head of the Department of Urban Planning, Prof. Dr. Helmut Schönenberger, CEO of UnternehmerTUM GmbH, and Prof. Dr. Werner Lang, Vice President for Sustainable Transformation and Chair of Energy Efficient and Sustainable Design of and Building at the Technical University of Munich.
Visibility of jointly developed NEBourhood ideas
Gunda Wolf-Tinapp, deputy chair of the Ramersdorf-Perlach district committee, spoke for the citizens of Neuperlach, who are the most important creative force in the NEBourhoods project. All the ideas and changes that have appeared in the district since this summer have been created through their involvement. With its population of more than 70,000, Neuperlach is the largest German urban expansion area of the post-war era. Today, the district is faced with significant social, urban planning and structural challenges, with many residential and office buildings from the 1960s to 1980s in need of refurbishment, and neglected open spaces.
The goal of the joint work with citizens, creative persons and specialists in the living laboratories of “Creating NEBourhoods Together” is the development of ideas that make sustainable living and working in Neuperlach possible. Public spaces, attractive housing, energy communities and local mobility are their focus, as are youth culture, nutrition, biodiversity and a circular economy. All the experience and results gathered within the context of the New European Bauhaus lighthouse project will be made available afterward throughout Europe. In this way Neuperlach will serve as a model for other European cities.
NEBourhoods living labs
In the NEBourhoods Pavilion, which is centrally located in the residential ring of Neuperlach and has been a hotspot for interested and engaged citizens since January 2024, the coordinator for NEBourhoods, Dr. Sylvia Pintarits of the Department of Urban Planning, ceded the floor to the individual teams to present the projects and living laboratories created through co-creative processes.
Stefan Gruhne, Prof. Andreas Müsseler and Prof. Andreas Hild used models developed at the TUM Chair of Architectural Design, Renovation, and Preservation to explain the “Redesigning Housing Structures” (Wohnen weiterbauen) NEBourhoods project: the energetic refurbishment of residential buildings in which the necessary insulation layer is conceptualised as a usable space.
The shading architecture developed jointly since 2023 by the TUM Chair of Building Technology and Climate-Responsive Construction and str.ucture GmbH was presented by the participating students and teaching staff of the Campus di Monaco international Montessori School. Together they created a place to hang out in the shade – or to charge devices, thanks to the integrated solar modules.
In another collaborative effort with students and other young people, filmmaker Patrik Thomas developed Ciné Vélo Cité: a mobile bicycle cinema that has been popping up in different places all over Neuperlach since last summer. Ciné Vélo Cité was created in the context of the “PEARL – Places for Youth Culture” project of the Chair of Urban Planning and Theory of the City in the Department of Architecture at the Munich University of Applied Sciences.
Serena Keller of the TUM Chair of Building Technology and Climate-Compatible Construction introduced the energy community München eG, which was founded by citizens as an inclusive community in early June of 2024 under the NEBourhoods aegis. They were supported in this by Otter Energy, whose start-up installed the first meter at the Perlacher Herz.
Another networking success within the entrepreneurial NEBourhoods activities is the WeOn start-up. Not only did its founder Timo Weil present a model of his innovative foldable timber-hybrid building system, but UnternehmerTUM gave WeOn the opportunity to implement his construction for the first time in the form of the NEBourhoods Pavilion.
Statements by the President of the European Commission
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission:
“’Creating NEBourhoods Together’ is a wonderful project, the New European Bauhaus here on the local level. The collaboration is extraordinary, not only with the city, but also with the university and the business sector and above all with many, many young people with splendid ideas. Something is growing here from the bottom up that brings with it not only beauty, but also functionality. But also very importantly, sustainability and more social togetherness. It couldn’t be better. And I am really thrilled with the many ideas.”
“’Creating NEBourhoods Together’ here in Neuperlach is an amazing and exemplary pilot project. Those exist already in other European regions with similar but different ideas. The principle is the same and the better it is, the greater the urge to imitate it. You can see that here in Neuperlach, being here today. At least I feel that way, I am so thrilled with everything that I’ve heard that I am practically itching to get the same things started somewhere else. Whether in Portugal or in Finland, where the conditions are of course different. But Neuperlach has certainly set an example.”
Statement Ursula von der Leyen
Statements by representatives of the City of Munich
Verena Dietl, Third Mayor of the City of Munich:
The Third Mayor Verena Dietl was pleased to be given the opportunity to welcome the EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Neuperlach and to show her the development of the district through the European-funded “Creating NEBourhoods Together” project:
“We are very proud to have the New European Bauhaus project here in Munich. You can see that the heart of the EU beats in the communities as well.”
Gunda Wolf-Tinapp, Deputy Chairwoman of the Ramersdorf-Perlach District Council:
“It is a grass-roots project with a great many ideas, from hubs for neighbourliness and mobility to biodiversity, nature and animals in the city all the way to residential renovation or shading to prevent heat islands. That makes us happy! It makes us especially happy when you can see these things. That is very important at the community level.”
Dr. Sylvia Pintarits, Coordinator for NEBourhoods, City of Munich Department of Urban Planning:
“’Creating NEBourhoods Together’ is the programme for our project. The word NEBourhoods alone represents the fact that we connect neighbourhood with the New European Bauhaus. And ‘creating together’ is also something that lies close to our heart. Here, the Munich University of Applied Sciences and the Competence Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries (Kompetenzzentrum Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft), alongwith all of our other partners, have brought a fantastic collaboration with the local people to life.
Statements from the founding partners of "Creating NEBourhoods Together"
Prof. Dr. (Univ. of Florence) Elisabeth Merk, Chief Planner of the City of Munich and Head of the Department of Urban Planning:
“Transformation, the Green Deal and the Renovation Wave are now always happening in a city that already exists. The times in which a Neuperlach can be built again on a green field are over. That is why it is so important that we bring in new momentum and don’t just repair the deficiencies.
For us, the New European Bauhaus with the Neuperlach NEBourhoods project is a qualification of what happens at the municipal level with urban development funding. The New European Bauhaus is using creative ideas to open a window and to connect things in different ways. That gives us the chance to bring the things that we do anyway to bear once again.”
Prof. Dr. Helmut Schönenberger, CEO of UnternehmerTUM GmbH:
“It is fantastic that we here in Munich’s Neuperlach are making this grand Brussels vision of the New European Bauhaus into something concrete. And what is important to us as Munich residents is that we work together really well: the city, the universities, the start-up crowd and above all the young people. This is why the topic of entrepreneurship is so important. Here in Neuperlach we have a little offshoot of our big Makerspace, a Makerspace Container. A great many prototypes were built there.”
Prof. Dr. Werner Lang, Vice President for Sustainable Transformation, Chair of Energy-Efficient and Sustainable Design and Building at the Technical University of Munich (TUM):
“All the themes that make up our project – more green, more biodiversity, inclusion, participation, circular thinking – the themes that one would love to have merge together: that has actually happened here in Neuperlach. Our focus was initially at the neighbourhood level, then on the building level. Always tied to the question: what do the people here need? By thoroughly mixing things up in the neighbourhood we are trying to counteract the monofunctional development that characterised the Sixties. We succeed primarily through our participatory workshops and thanks to all those who are involved. And thanks to the initiative of the New European Bauhaus, which has made this possible.”
Statements of the project participants
Antonia Veramendi, Head Mistress of the Campus di Monaco International Montessori School, Neuperlach:
“We are a special school. From primary school through vocational training, of our 370 students, more than half have had refugee experience, and in addition a good number of them have inclusion needs. This means that they have significant social disadvantages, yet despite this, all of our students successfully graduate from school and then successfully enter into the workforce or job training. That is a huge accomplishment for these young people. In addition to youth welfare and inclusion we take sustainability education extremely seriously, because of course it is the socially disadvantaged groups in society that also suffer especially from the consequences of climate change.”
Students of the Campus di Monaco International Montessori School, Neuperlach:
“I am super happy that we have a project like the shade roof at our school. In summer it’s really hot here and now we can have our classes outside, as well. With the solar panels on the shade roof you can even charge your mobile phone.”
Serena Keller, Chair of Building Technology and Climate-Compatible Construction/TUM:
“With the energy community München eG, we laid the foundations so that other neighbourhoods can follow our lead. We found solutions to various challenges, wrote the by-laws, integrated everything imaginable – and all this together with citizens and directly across many social viewpoints. The knowledge from everything we create is available for others to use. But of course other people are also welcome to join us.”
Prof. Andreas Müsseler, OTH Regensburg, Department of Design, Construction and Digitally Supported Realisation:
“We must, of course, bring the fifty-something-year-old residential buildings up to a modern energy standard. But instead of just applying a necessary insulation layer, our concept is to expand it so that it becomes a usable space, a conservatory that is placed on the front of the building like simple timber shelving with simple glazing. With such a veranda the flats gain not only a better energy balance and more space, but suddenly an enormous diversity and flexibility.”
Timo Weil, Founder of the WeOn Start-Up (NEBourhoods Pavilion):
“We developed a timber-hybrid building system, inspired by the values of the New European Bauhaus and megatrends like neo ecology and microliving. What’s special about it is that the folding mechanism makes it easy to transport and quick to set up.”
Patrik Thomas, Photographer and Filmmaker, Developer of Ciné Vélo Cité:
“Neuperlach doesn’t have its own cinema, there’s a lack of low-threshold cultural initiatives. Our mobile bicycle cinema Ciné Vélo Cité brings film showings, media education and the issues surrounding climate and mobility into the urban space as a moveable movie theatre. It is more important than ever to impart media skills to young people in order to build up the media-educated critical society of tomorrow. Film culture is an essential part of the current educational landscape. With the bicycle cinema we bring all this into the public sphere in an approachable way.”