A perfect storm of misshapen steel and glass has unfurled itself across BMW's campus in Munich, Germany, twisting with as much torque as one of the automaker's in-line six-cylinder engines. Designed by Austrian architecture firm Coop Himmelb(l)au, the 807,000-square-foot building, known as BMW Welt ("BMW World"), is the company's new brand experience and vehicle delivery center all in one—a sprawling, upscale, visually stunning hybrid of amusement park and shopping mall for automotive enthusiasts. "It's the total BMW cosmos," says Rudolf Wiedemann, the facility's director. "With BMW Welt, we have a place to show the emotion and destination of the brand to our customers."
The whirling structure, with much of its bulk hovering in midair and a steel-and-glass funnel cloud keeping it anchored to the ground, looks caught in a state of suspended animation. The sense that the building is its own isolated weather system is no accident. "We translated the geometry of a constantly changing cloud into architecture," says Wolf D. Prix, the renowned architectural theorist who cofounded Coop Himmelb(l)au in 1968. "It's rather complex, I must say." No question. But the firm (whose name means something like "cooperative sky blue building") has never been shy about putting forward radical ideas. "When we founded this firm, we said sky blue is not a color, but rather the idea of having architecture that changes like clouds," Prix says. "At the time, we were protesting against stupid, rigid boxes."
The opening of the facility in late October comes at a time when the big German automakers have been upping the ante in an all-out architectural war. In addition to BMW Welt, BMW completed a factory building in Leipzig by Zaha Hadid in 2005. Mercedes-Benz opened a thrillingly warped museum designed by UN Studio in Stuttgart last year. Porsche is now at work on a daring cantilevered museum that it calls "the most spectacular construction project in our company's history." And then there's Volkswagen's Autostadt in Wolfsburg, where cars await new owners in crystalline cylindrical towers.
One of Prix's pet peeves has always been structural columns—those ungainly supports that tend to get in the way of free-flowing space and, um, hold buildings up. As a result, Coop Himmelb(l)au engineered the massive roof of BMW Welt, which involves 2,000 tons of steel, to rest on only 11 columns—a surprisingly paltry number that might make even the most die-hard BMW fan think twice about stepping inside. "It emphasizes the impression of floating," Prix says. "And it's very sexy."
BMW Welt expects to deliver about 45,000 vehicles while welcoming 800,000 visitors a year. It is a global vehicle delivery center, which means that buyers, even from North America, can arrange to visit their new steeds right in the sanctuary—and hit some German asphalt—before shipping them home. In the meantime, autophiles can peruse exhibitions about automotive research and innovation, shops stocked with BMW-branded lifestyle goods, and a "junior campus" that gives 7- to 13-year-olds a taste for speed. "It's a little city," Prix says of life inside BMW Welt.
