Miniatur Wunderland builds bridge across the canal and crosses Atlantic Ocean

Roughly 10 million Euros will be invested in new sections | Miniatur Wunderland builds South America in Argentina.

This August Miniatur Wunderland will turn 18 – for German standards this is legal age. About time to ponder the future. And, as seems typical behavior for most nearly 18 year olds, the future is very different from what had been planned years ago.

In March, a new lease was signed for the extension of Miniatur Wunderland. Another 3000 square meters will be added on the other side of the canal.

Monaco / Provence is currently under construction, momentarily they are the last sections in the original building. For this section Gerrit Braun is working on a completely new technique with his team. The idea is to create a miniature Formula 1 race track via scalable magnetic fields. The results are still open. “A miniature Formula 1 race track is the technically most challenging project in the history of the Wunderland so far, aside from our airport. We managed to run the first Bolides on a test run. We are still a long way from depicting complete Formula 1 races with different driving characteristics and overtaking maneuvers”, says Gerrit Braun. The grand opening is planned for November 2020.

Before then a smaller section, rich with details, will be opened on 9 square meters: a new fun fair. The original fair, built in 2001 for the opening of the Wunderland, will now be redesigned and doubled in size. New rides, roughly 100.000 LEDs and many technical gadgets will become the highlight in one of the initial sections of the Wunderland. The grand opening for the fun fair is scheduled for November 2019.

The most spectacular project though is the extension of the exhibition. Originally planned for the other side was a section depicting England. This idea has been replaced by the Wunderland’s largest adventure so far: “You could say we have already accomplished our Brexit”, says Fredrik Braun with a smirk, adding: “By now 25% of our visitors come from abroad. To many of them, Europe looks alike: Old houses, small towns, meadows, fields, forests and the occasional mountain. Therefore we decided to create completely new worlds. We are starting by building South America. The idea came to us in New York where we met a, and I mean this is in the most positive way, completely crazy Argentinian family.”

The vision to build South America with these great South Americans in South America was born in 2017. The South American continent is very different from Europe. Where there is much light and civilization in Europe, in South America there is the opposite. Here you can find the last unexplored parts of the world in the Amazon delta and there are myths, massive nature and extremely buzzy cities. It is hardly possible to authentically depict this from a workshop thousands of kilometers far away and so far we (luckily) don’t have Google Maps for the Amazon or the Antarctic.

Therefore we have been building with the Martinez family for the last year in a suburb of Buenos Aires. So far this is the most venturesome project in the history of Wunderland. Wunderland model builders are working with a team of 15 South Americans to create this new spectacular section. For the first phase of construction 200 square meters have been plotted, depicting the Amazon and the Andes, Rio and the Antarctic.

“The South America project is both adventure and fairy tale. The family father, Ricardo Martinez, a model building enthusiast and drummer by profession, discovered a documentary about Miniatur Wunderland back in 2002 via Deutsche Welle. He videotaped it to repeatedly replay it for his four children over the years. His children were raised with this footage and our YouTube channel. They always wanted to see Miniatur Wunderland and now we are going together on an expedition into the unknown”, Gerrit Braun explains.

Parallel to the South America section a new and very special section is under construction in Hamburg. On their way to the new building the visitors may view the world from a bird’s perspective. The exhibition “The World from Above” will depict the earth’s most beautiful places from the perspective of a low flying airplane. A sum of 10 million Euros will be invested into the new sections over the next years.

“A new and exciting phase is starting for us. The past years we have been building and enlarging our exhibition section after section. Now we are traveling new roads and embarking on a great adventure. I don’t know if everything will work out the way we have dreamt it to be. Our aspiration has always been to outperform ourselves and to surprise the visitors. In order to accomplish that, you have to leave the road well-travelled and explore new paths into the unknown. I am excited to see the outcome and can hardly wait”, says Frederik Braun.