Wwhat should that be again? “The Lovelace”. “This is really happening” was written for months on the door of the former Bayerische Staatsbank at Kardinal-Faulhaber-Strasse 1, to the right and left of it you could see two fingers shaped into a victory sign. The address couldn’t be better: between Salvatorstrasse and Prannerstrasse, not far from Brienner Strasse and the Feldherrnhalle and also just around the corner from the Frauenkirche and Promenadenplatz. People shop here who don’t have to worry about money – everyone else is amazed at how spruced up and splendid and also deserted the city of Munich sometimes appears in their hearts in broad daylight.
Lovelace – Any orders for Linda?
The board members of the Hypo-Vereinsbank last resided in house number one, after the neo-baroque building was gutted and renovated for them in 2005. There was talk of a three-digit million sum. In 2011 the building was acquired by Bayerische Hausbau, which in turn belongs to the Schörghuber Group (hotels, breweries, real estate and salmon production). A luxury hotel with 150 rooms was to be built. On the other hand, the neighbors were up in arms, above all the head of the “Bayerischer Hof”, the five-star shed at whose pool Mario Adorf made film history as manufacturer Heinrich “I shit you something with my money” Haffenloher.
View from a former executive office, now a hotel room.
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Photo: The Lovelace / Steve Herud
And now? Furniture and boxes and other things were carried in and out for months. “The Lovelace”. What does the name mean, what’s going on there now? Arts? Mathematics? Pornography? It starts with the pregnant name: do the creators refer to Linda or Ada?
“To Ada Lovelace,” says Gregor Wöltje, architect and co-operator of the project, as he guides through the building. “And on Linda a little too – but in her late role as an anti-porn industry activist.” Both ladies challenged the conventions of their time. Linda Lovelace was the stage name of the leading actress in the film Deep Throat, the highest-grossing film of all time based on the ratio of production costs ($25,000) to estimated gross revenue ($600 million). Linda got nothing from the money, but instead unlimited humiliation and beatings from her husband, as recently demonstrated in a very oppressive Hollywood film. “Deep Throat” was also the name of the secret source that supplied Bernstein and Woodward with information in parking garages at night in the Watergate scandal.
Long live interim use
Ada Lovelace is usually only known by the smarter nerds: the Briton, born in 1815, the only daughter of the poet Lord Byron, with whom she never had contact, is considered the mother of programming languages because her mother in turn made it possible for her to study mathematics.
It can be assumed that the operators of the “Lovelace” project must also calculate. They only have two years to make their visions come true and to recoup the investment of around one million euros. Because the plan for the large Schörghuber 150-room grand hotel had to be shelved after the neighbors had successfully filed a lawsuit. Until everything has been clarified, the property will be used temporarily – the “Lovelace” concept was awarded the contract. And this concept is: just a small hotel with 30 rooms and suites, plus readings, discussions, music, shops, bar, barber, vegan, yoga and ping-pong on almost 5000 square meters and everything the modern city dweller needs to stay in the flow .
Staircase in the former Bavarian State Bank.
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Photo: The Lovelace / Steve Herud
Much was left as it was. The hall-like nature of the executive offices is swallowed up by a curtain behind which the magazine shelves are hidden, in which one no longer finds specialist literature for executives, but rather more exciting print products. There are also cupboards and a floor-to-ceiling work by the artist Florian Süssmayr; there will never have been more poetic punk here. The rooms, which are far too high and large to be able to sell profitable hotel rooms, provoke a look. The materials are the finest, the view from the windows is priceless. The room prices start at 180 euros.
But there is a lot of noise on three floors with the possibility of absolute silence at the same time: the bedrooms are absolutely soundproof thanks to the management board and 15 centimeters thick padding, you float over oak parquet, the rooms on the top floor have double doors. A carpenter almost cried at the idea that they would soon be ripped out, and murmured something about “6000 euros for each one”, says Wöltje.
Punk in the board office
The “Lovelace” project is limited to two years, until 2019. “Although it would of course be nice if we were given more time,” says Wöltje, who belongs to Michi Kern’s team alongside Lissie Kieser, Cambis Sharegh and Alexander Lutz. It is to be expected that the concept will work, because almost everything that Kern touches becomes something. Similar to the artist Florian Süssmayr, he learned his craft in the Munich club nights of the 80s, most of his shops – including: Cafe Reitschule, Pacha, the Zerwirk, also yoga schools and most recently the Lost Weekend, a bookshop with a coffee shop – were and are an integral part of day and night life in Munich. In addition, there is now the “Lovelace”, which enriches the city with 30 rooms swept by the decadent breath of the financial world, with the longest bar in Munich and a few wonderful small terraces with a view of the towers of the old town, on which you can wonderfully doze off your day, true to Ada Lovelace’s motto: “I’m one of those geniuses who limit themselves to recovering.”