For owners to keep in mind!

For owners to keep in mind!

Fans are screaming: “He scores!”

The first point, to which the participants of the tour were brought, was the famous stadium Allianz Arena, where two Munich clubs, the Bavaria and Munich 1860 play their home games. The tour of the arena was rather of a technical character – the tour participants were told about how the stadium operates, how many service staff members are on premises at any one time, how the security services interact with each other during the games, and what technical support helps them in this. Tour participants were surprised by the fact that the staff of the management company of the stadium included only seven technicians, and these worked in shifts. The duties of technicians are to audit the existing technical systems and serviceability testing of the engineering infrastructure. Moreover, employees are not tied to the room where the automated monitoring system is located – as it is connected to smartphones of the employees, so they can monitor the serviceability at a distance from the control area. In the event of fault detection, the technician calls a mobile outsourced service, which deals with the removal of the detected problem. You can read an article about the Allianz Arena in this issue of the CRE Global column.

The German experimentarium

After that, the participants of the property-tour went on a walking tour of the pilot area of Ackermannbogen, where a large-scale construction project of energy-efficient buildings is currently being implemented. The tour was guided by the architect and consultant on energy issues of the municipality of Munich, Natalie Neuhausen. “Every year, the administration of Munich allocates 14 million euros for payments to developers to implement effective energy rehabilitation of buildings. In fact, every building must meet standard German regulations, which themselves contain a great deal of energy efficiency parameters,” said the expert. However, those buildings that wish to receive grants, must comply with even more stringent criteria.” According to Ms. Neuhausen, there are about 20 different parameters, which must be met by any developer wishing to construct an energy-efficient building. The highest level of energy savings is reached in buildings with very thick walls, and a central heating system connected with central ventilation. Energy efficiency is composed of a set of indicators, and there has to be a certain balance between them. For example, it makes no sense to build expensive energy-efficient devices into the building, if it has thin walls. However, there is no point to plan thick walls in a project, if there will be placed into it some outdated equipment that does not meet the parameters of energy efficiency. “Right from the start, one should think about which standard to build by, in order to choose all the technical equipment, materials, finishes that will be used during construction, to meet these standards. In this sense, the passive house is a high enough standard, which is assigned to objects that consume almost no external energy,” said Ms. Neuhausen.

Participants of the Property tour passed through the area, built up with passive buildings, to learn more about the system of solar panels on rooftops, heating system here are located in underground tanks, and they store the unused hot water heated by the solar panel system.

BC by STRABAG

Further, the property tour participants proceeded to the construction site of an office building, being implemented by STRABAG. Ms. Spiring, the representative of the development company, talked about the specifics of this facility, the intricacies of the lease relationships, and the financial performance of the project. Russian experts were quite surprised to learn that the net rental price per square meter in the new business center, when completed, will be about 200 euros per sqm/year. Moreover, the object will be commissioned not in the shell & core condition, but with a minimum of decoration, made upon agreement with the future tenant. In her turn, Ms. Spiring was incredulously surprised to learn about the cost of office property rentals in the Russian capital.

Highlight Towers: mixed-use complex on top

Next, the participants visited the Highlight Towers mixed-use complex – the highest complex of Munich, designed by the American architect Helmut Jahn in 2004. This building has super-fast elevators, modern engineering systems, the facade of the object is kept in good condition, which casts doubt on the fact that it has been almost 10 years since its commissioning.

Architecture in light

For dessert, all tour participants had an excursion guided by Karsten Winkels, Chief of the Winkels Concepts Bureau, specializing in architectural lighting. On the example of some of the iconic sites and streets of Munich, namely the BMW museum, Foreign Ministry of Bavaria, Bavarian National Museum, Maximilianstrasse, the architect showed the versatility of architectural lighting, the possibility of performing not only artistic and decorative tasks, but purely utilitarian ones as well, with the help of architectural lighting. “If you look at the uncluttered highlighting of the Highlight Towers mixed-use complex, you will see that the building is not lit on the outside, but only from the inside. For Munich this is very important, because there is no contamination of light space of the city,” said Mr. Winkels. “Active discussions about lighting solutions are now taking place concerning the ‘Moscow-City’ MIBC. In my opinion, the problem of the project is that an overall lighting concept was never created for it – each of the towers has its own light script. As a result, there is an arms race between the developers, a kind of cold war.” In the lighting of the BMW museum, the task was, in the first place, to light up the cars on display, and in addition, it was necessary to create the right lighting for the workplaces and other areas. As a result, in the design of the ceiling were included long slits – slots, in which several light sources were located. Thus, the lighting was made flexible and multi-functional. It can be programmed in each zone depending on the tasks. Furthermore, these slots have solved the problem of optimizing illumination costs. If there were no such slots, and the lighting design was created based on designer lamps, it would cost many times more than the lights located in slots.

The property-tour participants admitted that this day was extremely eventful and interesting. Just little remains undone – to apply much of what has been seen in the context of Russian reality.

CRE

14.10.2013