Hilton Munich Airport (formerly Hotel Kempinski)

Hilton Munich Airport (formerly Hotel Kempinski)

LOCATION
Munich, Germany

CLIENT
Flughafen Munchen GmbH

Completion Date
1994

Architect
Murphy/Jahn

TypE
Civic Landscapes
Hospitality
Retail
Transportation

Description
The Munich Airport Center is like a small city combining the International Air Terminal and its attendant parking and services with a train station that connects the airport to high-speed international trains, local trains, and the subway system. Surrounding these interconnected systems is a complex of hotels, offices, and retail, all tied together and to the transportation nodes by access and service roads and moving sidewalks. PWP and Murphy/Jahn designed linear parks, parterres, malls, atria, and plazas to provide pedestrians with a continuous spatial experience.

The Hotel Kempinski (now the Hilton Munich Airport) garden design is composed of multiple overlapping and contrasting grids intended to be experienced from the ground as well as viewed from above. Patterns are made up of low boxwood hedges, colored gravels, columnar oaks, and lawn. When standing in the garden, visitors understand the space according to their particular vantage points since the intersecting orthogonal geometries are not immediately visible from the ground. Viewed from above, the patterns become clear. 

Large glass cabinets filled with pots of artificial geraniums move diagonally through the interior spaces, while abstracted geometric "trees" forest the shimmering space and a line of lighted glass blocks provide a "stream". The various grids meet at the hotel bar in the midst of a circle of artificial palm trees.

Collaborators
Engineers: Ove Arup & Partners