Today we visited BMW Welt (World) and the BMW Museum in Munich.

BMW Welt was designed by COOP HIMMELB(L)AU out of Vienna. It is the result of a design competition that the BMW Group held in 2001. Construction of the ~73,000 square meter facility was completed in 2007.

The project is centered around a great hall and an elevated vehicle delivery area known as Premiere. It was designed — and this includes the HVAC system — to handle 40 car deliveries per hour, or 250 per day. I guess they don’t work a full 8 hours.

Below are two photos that I took of the delivery area. The circles you see on the floor in the second picture are rotating platforms. This is where you want to pick up your new car.

And here is a plan of the entire Welt space via COOP HIMMELB(L)AU:

I also really enjoyed the BMW Museum, which is housed in a separate building adjacent to the BMW Tower (the one that looks like engine cylinders).

The “art cars” were a lot of fun. I’m sure that many of you will be able to guess the artist behind this one:

But what I enjoyed most were the classics like this one here:

The least interesting cars for me were the ones that weren’t old enough to be “classic”, but also weren’t new and shiny. This can happen with architectural styles as well. Designs sometime need time to settle in.

For more photos of BMW Welt and the BMW Museum, follow me on Instagram.

Drawings/Isometrics: COOP HIMMELB(L)AU