July 22, 2022, 9am
Between 1970 and 1972, a timeless icon with international appeal was created in Munich in just 26 months. 3.5 million working hours on the construction site. 500 builders and 200 architects, engineers and draftsmen. Over 3,000 facade elements manufactured for the first time in Europe using the Japanese cast aluminium process. At the time, employees from 12 nations built the BMW landmark. Today, colleagues from over 50 nations work side by side there and in the neighboring plant.
To this day, the BMW tower with its suspended construction is one of the most innovative engineering buildings of the post-war period—because the four cylinders are hung from a cruciform steel beam construction on the roof. In the process, the building did not grow from the bottom up, but rather the upper floors were first manufactured time-effectively on the ground, then moved upwards hydraulically on the massive “tower shaft” made of reinforced concrete and completed in several segments. In August 1972, opposite the world-famous Olympic site designed by Behnisch & Partner with Frei Otto, the BMW Group Headquarters was completed. Designed by Austrian architect Professor Karl Schwanzer, the administrative building has since become a timeless icon with global appeal for Munich and the company. With its impressive facade as well as the visionary building and spatial concept behind it, the “suspended tower” uniquely combines visual conciseness with constructive and functional logic. The innovative power of Schwanzer’s design stands for BMW then as now, making the company headquarters a beacon of sustainable mobility for tomorrow. Celebrated in the media as the “most impressive and coolest corporate headquarters in the world,” it is not only a symbol of economic success, but also stands for international exchange, peace and interculturalism. Today, the “built communication” implemented by Schwanzer points the way to a new era of electrification, digitalization and circularity.
Professor Karl Schwanzer (1918–1975):
“If you have decided to be an architect, you must have the courage to want to fulfill visions. Architecture also is an art of communication, a means of communicating across centuries. Perseverance is creative. Accuracy, punctuality, continuity and modesty are the best companions. To create, not as an agonizing front but as a need of joy. To work joyfully makes life meaningful.”
The BMW Group can look back on a decades-long tradition of cooperation with world-famous architects. As early as Karl Schwanzer’s construction of the group’s headquarters, the company consciously opted for a dynamic type of construction, which was later to continue with trend-setting buildings by Zaha Hadid with her BMW Group Plant Leipzig (2005), BMW Welt in Munich by Coop Himmelb(l)au (2007) and Sir Nicholas Grimshaw’s Rolls-Royce plant in Goodwood (2003). In 2022, Rem Koolhaas’ Rotterdam-based OMA office and the Danish architects of 3XN were commissioned by BMW to transform its Munich headquarters and jointly shape urban production for the future.
Described by artist Peter Blake as a “unique piece of realized pop architecture,” its striking architecture remains to this day a symbol of visionary corporate decisions for a successful future.