Munich, Germany
The SAP Garden landscape integrates a major sports arena. Rather than inserting a building into the historic park, the project continues the Olympic park logic from 1972 around Günther Grzimek’s, where architecture and landscape shaped a common man-made topography.
SAP Garden Landscape in Munich’s Listed Olympic Park byLatz + Partner won a 2026 Green Good Design Award from The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and European Centre for Architecture, Art, Design, and Urban Studies.
Like sports venues are situated in hollows, the new arena is located on the former Olympic Velodrome site and hides 3 ice rink training halls under the climate-active park with its gently modelled terrain and reconnecting existing paths, views and open spaces.
Vegetation plays a central climatic and ecological role. More than 96 new trees, wildflower meadows on the green roof and extensively planted slopes create shade, evapotranspiration and habitat diversity.
Native species, permeable surfaces and reduced sealing strengthen biodiversity while ensuring low-maintenance, site-appropriate growth.
It is located along one of Munich’s speed bike lanes following the Biedersteiner Canal from Nymphenburg along the Olympic lake towards Schwabing. Over 600 bicycle parking spaces promote sustainable mobility and everyday public use.
The arena is a public landscape: visitors move around the sports arena in all directions on several levels and terraces, meadows and ramps, enjoying panoramic views over the Olympic Park to the Alps along the skyline while the sports facilities remain largely hidden beneath the terrain.
The green roof over the training facilities becomes a new part of the public park, seamlessly connected to the listed historic green fabric.
This landscape is conceived as green infrastructure. Roof surfaces, terraces and paved areas drain into swales, infiltration zones, which form part of the park’s flood-management system.
Almost all rainwater is retained and infiltrated on site, supporting groundwater recharge, reducing runoff and contributing to urban cooling.
To enable this landscape on top of three underground ice rinks, a 9,600 m² green-roof topography was constructed along slopes up to 22° and substrate depths reaching 4,7 m in height.
An innovative layered system of lightweight soils, insulation boards and geosynthetics provides high planting volumes within strict load limits while remaining elastic enough to absorb thermal movements of the steel structure below.
Large-scale laboratory shear tests at TUM University ensured long-term slope stability without mechanical anchoring.
By combining park landscape, arena building, existing parking elements and water management into an integrated system, SAP Garden demonstrates how a contemporary sports complex can be embedded in a protected cultural landscape, connected to existing infrastructure while delivering public value, climate resilience and biodiversity.
Project: SAP Garden Landscape in Munich’s Listed Olympic Park
Landscape Architects: Latz + Partner Landscape Architecture Urban Planning
Lead Landscape Architect: Iris Dupper
Design Team: Tilman Latz, Burkhard Krüpe, Roland Jakob
Architects: (Sports Arena): 3XN
Joint Venture Partner and Local Architects: CL MAP
Clients: Red Bull Stadion GmbH
Photographers: Latz + Partner, Oliver Heissner
