Erlangen: Siemens is simply building its own district – business

Working, researching, living – and all of that next door: the electronics group is creating a new location in Erlangen for more than one billion euros. Is this a closed cosmos for Siemensians? Are you kidding me? Are you serious when you say that.

“That’s where I grew up,” says Michael Sigmund, 65. All that can be seen of the apartment building he’s pointing to is the cubature, reduced to scale and covered with plexiglass. As part of an architectural model that depicts part of the south of Erlangen. Some miniature houses are replicated in light brown wood; also the one on Bissingerstrasse, where Sigmund spent the first ten years of his life. Painted bright white, however, the buildings that line up mainly along the new, one and a half kilometer long, car-free Siemens Promenade are striking. Most of them already exist in reality, as a view from the window of house M 111, in which the model is located, shows: five-storey office buildings with 17,000 jobs, as well as restaurants, cafés, hairdressers, laundry and other service providers on the ground floor. Even IG Metall has an office here. There is also a huge research and development laboratory including a ten-ton crane, as well as parking garages for 4,900 cars and 2,000 bicycles. And soon also 1500 apartments, at least.