MUNICH UGLY

Vienna ugly goes Munich

This event is part of Jane's Walk München 2025, with over 25 cool walks exploring neighbourhoods all over the city, building identity and belonging. And it is a co-operation with Green City, an ecological campaigning group, and Integratives Mobilitäts Zentrum.

In the month that Vienna Ugly is ten years old, our Austrian urban exploration goes international. This is a new way of looking at the city. It has been just as popular with locals as visitors in Wien, and plays with Munich's image as a conservative museum, trying to present something more contemporary, funny and surprising than the whole kitsch dirndl & beer industry. We look at the worst architecture in central Munich, and ask the crowd to vote on how ugly each building is.

After reports on Vienna Ugly in SZ, BR, Zeit and Tagesschau, several residents of Munich invited me to come and have some fun in their town also.

The tour is free, with no registration required, and will end in an ugly bar celebration of new urbanism.

Since Rauno Andreas Fuchs came to Vienna to present how Green City plays with public space, here is a revenge project, where Whoosh's Eugene Quinn comes to do the same for Green City's Munich collaboration with Integratives Mobilitäts Zentrum.

Munich Ugly is about city-branding, starting a debate about beauty and city development, the rebellious sense of taking back the city streets from capitalists-tourists-boring bureaucrats. We received an email from the head of Vienna city-planning with 11 buildings which we should include on the tour. And were twice fined €380, for leading an illegal tour. Three advantages of ugly buildings: the rent is cheaper - so they work against gentrification; they make the good buildings look good; you cannot see them if you live inside.

Wir wollen, dass die Einwohner ihre Stadt aus einer innovativen Perspektive entdecken.
Auf humorvolle Weise wollen wir einige ernste Punkte über die Rolle der Mode, der Boulevardpresse, der Stadtplaner, der Gentrifizierung, der Postmoderne, der prätentiösen Sprache der Architekten, und der gierigen Bauunternehmer ansprechen. Unser Spaziergang konzentriert sich auf den schlechten Geschmack reicher Leute, und deshalb haben wir so viel Auswahl an Gebäuden in der Münchner Innenstadt.
Wir wollen eine Debatte anstoßen - und so stimmen die Teilnehmer über die Attraktivität der einzelnen Gebäude ab.
Schönheit kann langweilig sein - aber hässlich ist es nie.

IMZ-Themen (Integratives Mobilitäts Zentrum - umweltfreundliche und sozialgerechte Mobilität) include of course walking, which is the greenest form of mobility, and the only one which is free. But it is undervalued, and almost never marketed. The public will vote on each building, to judge if it is ugly or not. And they are welcome to contribute to the debate, on aesthetics of the city.