The conservative British, having built the world's first metro, could not perceive brick as a finishing material with which to work underground. Brick walls remained the privilege of ground structures, and, oddly enough, service tunnels. And the most striking example of this is the City Road station, built in 1901 and abandoned in 1939. It is enough to look at its preserved ventilation kiosks and the pedestrian approach tunnel to remember that red brick architecture was born here, on the non-continental part of Europe. But the British did not dare to let the aesthetics of urban street space into the subway. Although, we must honestly admit that there was no talk at all about aesthetics on the first lines of the London subway.
Zitadelle, Berlin
The Germans are a different matter: they perfectly understood and understand that the introduction of street elements into the subway is always correct. And the question is not only about how a person feels, having descended in less than a minute, from the sun-drenched sidewalk into the space of an underground city, devoid of natural light, air and heat. The point is that having made a space-time puncture, that is, having moved in a very short time through the city underground, having no landmarks other than the names of the stations, a person willy-nilly experiences a feeling of confusion. It needs space identifiers. And in brick cities, and identifiers can be brick. And one of the most striking examples of an identifier station in German practice is the Zitadelle station of the U7 line of the Berlin underground.
Designed by Rahner G. Rummler, it opened on October 1, 1984. Its design is absolutely consistent with the place where you come - the citadel-fortresses of the once independent city of Spandau. Here, all the decoration is made of red facing bricks: ground pavilions, columns, walls, cornice rods and even inter-track dividers.
The frescoes telling about the history of Spandau and photographs of famous townspeople are just an addition to the general picture of the local underground and near-earth microcosm of the station. And one more, additional element of identification, working in full coordination with the first - with a brick. But the main role, all the same, is played by the brick. Standard masonry: spoon row, row of "poke - spoons" on the walls and row of "poke - spoons" on the columns. Nothing special. But it is precisely this ordinariness that gives the feeling of warmth and familiarity. Any details work brightly against its background: non-standard painted doors in the style of "border with a lock", ceiling lamps and all the necessary infographics.
Borovitskaya, Moscow
Oddly enough, but red-brick elements are found at one of the central stations of the Moscow metro. And although it would seem that it is very difficult for a brick to find a place in the architecture of underground palaces, the brick walls of passages, stairs and the inner surfaces of the arches of the platform arcades of the Borovitskaya station play the same role as the brick walls in Spandau: here is the Kremlin, and this is his vestibule, his underground spatial identifier.
And the ceramic panel "The Tree of Nations" by artist Nikolaev on the end wall of the platform hall with a relief image of the Kremlin and a stylized red brick crown of the mighty tree of "peoples inhabiting Russia" is also a continuation of the theme of human identification in the underground of a giant city.
Wandsbek-Gartenstadt, Hamburg
Hagemeister's 2DF Amazonas clinker glazed tiles in the staircase of the Wandsbek-Gartenstadt station of the Hamburg underground work in exactly the same way. It was opened on September 12, 1918 on the outskirts of the city to Walddorf - to the Forest Village, that is, outside the city. There was not even electricity in these places yet: the station was electrified only in September 1920. Even today it looks more like a suburban railway station than a city metro station. And, nevertheless, it is a transfer hub from the U1 line to the U3 line, which goes far beyond the old city border, into the very forests and villages that once were here.
Since the beginning of 2014, constant work has been going on to modernize the station itself, and all the station has been built, including ground lobbies and crossings. It is there, on the walls of the stairs, that Hagemeister's products appear. Smooth rows. The type of masonry is the usual single-row chain dressing: alternating spoon rows, laid with a shift in half a brick. Precisely fitted seams and subtle color transitions. And the color of the cladding, decided in shades of green-gray and gray-green, plays the role of the same identifier, reminding that here is the very place where the city once passed into the countryside, the rhythm of life, its color and light changed. … The architect tried to connect the clinker with this context, so the green glazed Hagemeister tile with foliage relief applied on it supports the idea.
Well, if we talk about the tile itself, then it is clinker, which means that, unlike facing ceramic bricks or, for example, facade plaster, it has a multiple advantage in durability and reliability.
The German underground has very strict requirements for the technical properties of the materials used in construction. They need to be very resilient because the environment in which they are used is very aggressive - snow mixed with snow control agents. Therefore, the German subway itself tests all building materials. Clinker Hagemeister passed all tests perfectly, and this was very important for the customer.
In Russia, Hagemeister plants are represented by Kirill.
Representative office of the Kirill company on Archi.ru
