Vertical garden for Rosenheimer Strasse in Munich as Ströer launches pilot project for the greenscaping of railway underpasses

A vertical garden at the heart of the city. In a first for the Company, Ströer has greenscaped a railway underpass on Munich’s busy Rosenheimer Strasse. It took 15 weeks of preparation to create the verdant garden that covers around 90 square meters and features eleven different plants. The garden incorporates two digital screens, each measuring roughly 10.5 square meters and powered by green electricity. The screens are mainly reserved for use by regional and local advertisers and by the Munich city authorities. The initiative is the pilot project for the greenscaping of bridge abutments across Germany as a way of making urban areas in particular more sustainable and more attractive.

The landscaping on Rosenheimer Strasse has appropriated the small area around the bridge facade as a new green space for the city. A substructure consisting of steel profiles and composite panels supports the fleece pockets that hold the plants in place. The garden accommodates around 2,240 plants, selected for their evergreen characteristics and because they provide a good source of food for insects. There is also an integral, automatic irrigation system that provides the plants with the best possible care and minimizes the number of maintenance visits that are required. The new vertical garden makes this underpass on Rosenheimer Strasse a more pleasant place to be. It makes use of a previously unused space that neither appealed to passers-by aesthetically nor served any particular function.

“It is a particular concern of ours, as an infrastructure provider and long-standing partner of municipal authorities, to make a sustainable contribution to healthier urban living. Our pilot project in Munich obviously enhances the visual appeal of the railway underpass. But it also improves the microclimate as a new green space in an urban area and helps to maintain biodiversity,” says Alexander Stotz, CEO of Ströer Media Deutschland GmbH.

“Ströer’s pilot project is green and on trend, and it is a boon for local businesses because it provides them with a high-quality space in which to advertise. And, of course, making urban areas greener also improves air quality and the visual appeal. I hope that we will be able to obtain many more such advertising spaces for Munich,” says Clemens Baumgärtner, Head of the Department of Labor and Economic Development for the City of Munich.

“Ströer is accompanying Munich, the state capital of Bavaria, on its journey to becoming a smart city. In a pilot project, it is installing a vertical garden with two digital advertising spaces at a busy railway underpass, just around the corner from the Werksviertel quarter. The futuristic and technically sophisticated design of the vertical garden not only makes the area nicer to look at, but also helps to curb particulate pollution. We are delighted to have Ströer by our side as a highly innovative partner for forward-looking projects such as this,” says Thomas Schmid, a representative of the CSU party on Munich’s city council.

"We want more green spaces in our city - for a good microclimate and even more quality of life. We must and will take creative paths to achieve this. In Rosenheimer Straße, we have now greened a railway bridge with a vertical garden for the first time. Eleven different plants transform a previously unused area into a green work of art. And the digital screens are powered by green electricity. With this nationwide pilot project, we want to be a role model," says SPD city councillor Klaus Peter Rupp.

By integrating two digital screens into the garden, Ströer offers advertisers and the City of Munich the opportunity to capture the public’s attention in an unusual yet heavily frequented environment, while at the same time conveying the notion of sustainability. The screens broadcast a program of adverts, editorial features, and regional content such as local news and weather in a three-minute loop. The inclusion of items of regional interest makes this an exciting new way for residents to stay up to date. In the future, it might also be possible to use the system in Munich to provide traffic guidance information and essential warnings, for example in the event of a storm or a bomb disposal incident.

Over the next decade, street furniture used in this way is set to become more than just an advertising medium; it will be part of an urban system known as the ‘smart city’. With this development in mind, Ströer will use street furniture to offer a range of additional benefits for an even more efficient infrastructure in cities in the future. Several projects are in the test phase, while some are already being implemented. Last year, for example, Ströer began greenscaping its first bus/tram shelters and outdoor advertising columns at sites across Germany. Greenscaping the roofs of street furniture with succulents such as sedum improves the microclimate and the aesthetics. While the precise impact of greenscaping can be difficult to quantify, it does have a positive effect in the long term in that the plants provide bees and other insects with an additional food source. Moreover, the soil substrate acts as a kind of sponge, retaining the rainwater that would otherwise drain straight into the sewers. Each roof can absorb 180 liters of water that it then releases to the plants. These go on to release 50 to 70 percent of the water back into the atmosphere through transpiration, which improves the microclimate in the immediate vicinity. Their foliage also acts as a filter for pollutants. Which is why every piece of greenscaped street furniture represents another small step toward a better urban climate.

 

 

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