TUM Campus by Dietrich Untertrifaller in Munich

In the shadow of the world-famous Olympic roof, Dietrich Untertrifaller and landscape architects Balliana-Schubert opened the TUM Campus on 16 May. It is the most ambitious new building project in the 50-year history of the Olympiapark, which is slated to become a Unesco World Heritage Site. As with the Olympic buildings from 1972, it is the roof that characterizes the architecture of the TUM Campus, not as a transparent tent, but rather as a 153-m-long wooden covering that cantilevers 18.3 metres over the Tartan track.

The two-storey block, which covers 42 000 m², is one of Europe’s largest wooden buildings. It encompasses 14 sports halls, 12 lecture theatres, 15 diagnostic rooms, 5 workshops, a cafeteria and a library. Most of the 300 offices should be completed by autumn 2023 in a second building phase.

“In future, the Technical University of Munich Campus will be available not only for high-performance sports and the education of sports teachers. Many of our sports scientists research rehabilitation, prevention and health support”, explains Till Lorenzen, managing director of TUM’s Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences. “And the facilities are not only for the 2000 students of our faculty. Every week, 9000 students from other subject areas work out here, using the climbing walls, the halls and the outdoor areas as part of the university’s sports program.”

The architects from Dietrich Untertrifaller, in collaboration with landscape architects Balliana-Schubert, won the architecture competition in 2015 with an astonishingly simple concept. In contrast to their fellow contestants, whose submissions were inspired by the architecture of the Olympic roof or buried the structure under a grass roof, the victors organized the complex spatial relationships in a clear carré that stands like a ship on the flat area of the newly designed 20 hectares of outdoor space.

Because of the hilly topography of the Olympiapark, the main level of the new building is on the first upper level. Like a pier, a wide pedestrian bridge connects the network of paths on the green embankment in front of the Olympic Village with the sports complex. This bridge leads directly to the bright Rue Intérieure, whose 185 m form the communicative backbone of the campus. The upper level of this central distribution axis offers a view of the sports halls. From here, the path leads to the lecture theatres and ultimately to the cafeteria, which has an outdoor view of the track-and-field stadium and an indoor view of the gyms. The changing rooms are centrally arranged on the ground floor; they provide ground-floor access to the gyms and outdoor areas. In the second building phase, office wings will be completed on both sides of the Rue Intérieure. Between these, planted inner courtyards will allow more daylight and views of the green, but will also provide the required emergency escape routes to the outdoors. The TUM Campus will replace the sports halls of load-bearing Corten steel that were built in 1972 but had to be demolished due to their poor condition. The new campus will add lecture theatres and diagnostic rooms to the facility.

© David Matthiessen

“Our design was selected because the new building could be created while the existing sports halls from 1972 were still in use. Our brown wooden façades join the brown of the Corten steel to form a single unit”, explains Much Untertrifaller on a tour shortly before the inauguration. “Moreover, our design was by far the most affordable. Wood is sustainable and has been affordable until now because unlike steel, it does not have to be protected with fire-prevention coatings.” However, the building core and a few of the walls are of exposed concrete: they function both as supports for the 28-m wooden box-girder elements that form the jutting canopy and as a stiffening factor in case of earthquakes.

Read more in Detail 5.2023 and in our databank Detail Inspiration.