Die Macherei opened in autumn 2021 in Munich’s Berg am Laim district as an office and commercial neighbourhood with a distinctive design ambition. Three architecture practices, HWKN by Matthias Hollwich, holger meyer architektur and OSA Ochs Schmidhuber, designed six buildings across the 26,400 m² site, each with its own architectural language and uses, from offices and restaurants to a design hotel. Brick façades, weathering steel and exposed concrete connect them, recalling Berg am Laim’s former clay fields and brickworks. Laim means clay; bricks from this area were also used to build Munich’s Frauenkirche. The project received a European Property Award for 2019–2020. When ALDI SÜD became interested in the location, the space had already been allocated to a competitor, with negotiations under way for several months. When those negotiations stalled, a window opened for ALDI SÜD to present its own concept. A conventional store would not have been enough: the neighbourhood’s operators wanted a design that belonged to the identity of the wider development.