The German Armed Forces will leave the Bavarian Erdinger airbase in 2024. A new district is to be built on the site. The winners of the 190-hectare “Erding Air Base” urban development and landscape planning competition have now been announced.
When the German Armed Forces leave the Erding airbase in Bavaria in 2024, a new city district is to be built here on 380 hectares. The winners of the 190-hectare “Erding Air Base” urban development and landscape planning competition have now been announced. Read all about the project here.
Just a stone’s throw away from today’s Munich Airport, the approximately two and a half kilometer long runway of the air base has shaped the Erdingen skyline since 1935. During the Second World War, the Wehrmacht used the quickly built airfield as a hub for military supplies all the way to North Africa. After the end of the war – the airbase and the city center of Erding were now in ruins – the area in the northeast of the ducal city found its new military purpose as “Airfield R.91” under the command of the US Air Force.
Soon after the handover of command, the Erding airbase was once again assigned an important supply task. This time, however, the cargo lists of the transport planes contained neither weapons nor ammunition, but powdered milk, flour and coal. From then on, the raisin bombers took off north from Erding as part of the Berlin Airlift to supply the starving and freezing citizens of the divided city with the essentials.
All drawings: Hähnig | Gemmeke Architects
Traces of this period can still be found in Erding today. An entire housing estate near the air base, built for members of the US military, bears the name of the airlift pilot Leland V. Williams, who crashed his plane in the Taunus Mountains on the way from Frankfurt to Berlin. And so here, in the middle of Erding in Upper Bavaria, there is a district called “Williamsville” that doesn’t sound at all Bavarian.
The military use of Erding Air Base has been history for a few years now. After the facility was handed over to the air force in 1957 and served as a base for supply regiments and various air squadrons in the meantime, the last Tornado took off into the airspace over Erding in 2014. Since then, the runway has only been used by the light aircraft of the Erding Flying Club, which has been based here as part of a civilian shared use since 1968.
The Bundeswehr will close the Erding site in 2024. The approximately 380 hectares of the site will then be converted to civilian use. It is currently the largest contiguous conversion area in Bavaria. Where barbed wire fences and warning signs still stand today, Erding wants to create a completely new district in the future.
The planning area, which is now to be developed according to the plans of architects Hähnig + Gemmeke, covers around 190 hectares, i.e. approximately half of the vacant property. In a planning competition, the submission by the Tübingen office prevailed over nine other proposals. The motto of the design: “firmly anchored – at the navel of the world”. The area is connected to the old town of Erding via its south-western end. Williamsville borders the area to the south. The runway marks the boundary to the north. The design includes a junction station close to the city center in the western area, where S-Bahn and regional train lines meet and from there can cover the long-planned ring route to nearby Munich Airport on a common route.
All drawings: Hähnig | Gemmeke Architekten
According to the plans, an area of small-scale, car-free neighborhoods will span between these boundaries in the future, in which places to shop and work can be reached within short distances from the home. The districts will include communal areas, central parcel stations and mobility centers where residents can park their cars and switch to bicycles. The historical origins of the new Erdinger district should not be forgotten. Character-defining buildings such as the officers’ quarters or the aircraft hangars are to be preserved as witnesses to the past and remind citizens of the former air base.
The property’s rich tree population is likely to have been a particular planning tidbit. Hundreds of them, now 60 or 70 years old, stand here and already form park-like landscapes in parts of the Erdinger Fliegerhorst. The design from Tübingen firstly picks up on this and secondly preserves a large proportion of the existing trees. “Green joints” run the length of the new Erding district, while a green “climate boulevard” stretches across its width. The green corridors are complemented by spacious meadows and park areas to the north of the core area.
When it is finished, the new Erding district will offer high-quality living space for up to 3,500 people. However, it will be decades before the last building is completed.
You can find more information on the conversion of the Erding airbase in the brochure on the Erding airbase planning competition and at Hähnig + Gemmeke.
Interested in other current competition results? Click here to find out which design the jury selected as the winner of the expert opinion process for the forecourt of the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery.
