Sendling's Kitchen develops a new typology. It combines the wholesale market with cooking, teaching and exhibition uses. It creates an experimental space for research, community and learning through infrastructure, construction and circular processes in the food industry.
In Munich's Sendling district, at the interface between the historic Sendling centre and the Munich wholesale market, new architecture is being built that is dedicated to food distribution, production, consumption and research.
The existing local functions of the market hall are to be integrated and a laboratory for entrepreneurs, researchers and Sendling residents is to be created. How can this service architecture promote productivity in urban areas? An urban use type is to be designed that explores a new practice that is entirely in the spirit of the rural-urban production exchange.
The design develops a new typology. It combines the wholesale market with cooking, teaching and exhibition uses and creates an experimental space for new processes, collaboration and learning from one another.
Two storeys are added over the building's entire footprint to accommodate the new use. The functions of the market hall, infrastructure and research, processing and teaching will be stacked on top of each other on three levels. On the top floor, all users of the kitchen studios will be united on an equal level. This results in a diverse mix of uses, such as a food research start-up, a restaurant trying out new dishes, a school class or a shared flat having its cooking party.
The technical infrastructure is created by a technical level that is 'inserted' between the two public floors and supplies them centrally. Food can be transported upwards from the market using dumbwaiters. In the centre of each unit, which is marked by four supports, there is a supply interface. Any medium such as water, electricity or gas can be controlled directly from here and brought to the desired position. The resulting space does not dictate any configuration and is directly shaped and characterised by the various users and their behaviour. The result is a space that allows new processes to be tested in an experimental environment.
The steel construction allows for flexible adaptability, also for future uses. The existing structure is supplemented with additional supports on the ground floor. Above this, several floor-to-ceiling trusses run through the building, freeing up the top floor and allowing a new small-scale column grid to be introduced. A small biogas plant supplies the new building with energy gained from food waste and visualises material flows at the center of Sendling.
