Kamp-Lintfort is one of the many towns in the Ruhr region of Germany, formed from scattered settlements in the 19th - early 20th centuries around a large factory or, in this particular case, a coal mine. Usually in such settlements you can find one or two attractions, but there is no old city there and never has been. The lack of pleasant streets worsened in the middle of the last century: at the end of World War II, the Ruhr region, as the country's main industrial center, was heavily bombed by the Allies, and the entire center of Kamp-Lintfort, including the mine located in the heart of the city, was then razed to the ground. In the post-war decades, urban planners and architects had to create a comfortable environment for residents from scratch, and today the public and commercial center is the pedestrian street Mörserstrasse with three and four-storey buildings - modern, but reminiscent of medieval houses with narrow facades and gable roofs. However, until recently it ended with a completely different-scale structure: "Three White Giants", a residential complex of three 16-storey towers, which did not give Kamp-Lintfort harmony.
But now, on the site of these apartment buildings, there is a deliberately low EK3 shopping center designed by bob-architektur Cologne. It is assigned an honorable role - to complete the zone of the city center, and it faces the Mörserstrasse with the main building with a spectacular "bevel" and cantilever extension. But the main thing in the image of the building is its facades made of red-brown Hagemeister clinker bricks of the "Oregon" variety, in which the rich color is revived by silvery and pearlescent "flashes". The choice of clinker for the solution of the external appearance of the building is both a reference to the surrounding buildings, and - more broadly - to the building material traditional for the Ruhr region.
Thanks to clinker, an extended shopping center is perceived not as a monolith, but as an attractive object with a varied texture, and this diversity is also emphasized by uneven-sized, asymmetrically located window openings. As a result, the shopping center picks up and develops the "traditional", lively theme of the Mörserstrasse development, but dispenses with historical quotes, while maintaining a recognizably modern look. It is important to note that molded clinker bricks were specially produced for the difficult corners of the shopping center at the Hagemeister factory.
While the variety of textures of Oregon clinker was important for the “urban” side of the EK3 shopping center, the architects used another clinker quality for its façade facing the busy Ringstrasse - the ability to create ornate masonry. From the side of the road, the clinker wall of the shopping center is cut through by gates with "inclined" outlines: these diagonal lines create a special dynamics, as if in a hurry after the passing cars. But the EK3 facades are also advertising surfaces, which are intended just for motorists. Therefore, the authors of the project placed sections of clinker masonry with a zigzag profile on this side: on bricks laid with an edge can be applied on both sides of the advertisement so that it is equally clearly visible to drivers moving along the highway in both directions. This decision - the architects call it "kinetic advertising" - allowed to preserve the unity of the shopping center's appearance, in contrast to conventional billboards that would simply cover the facade - and its luxurious clinker coating - from the glances of passing motorists.
About the project: architects - bureau bob-architektur BDA, head Robert Wetzels (Dipl. Ing. Robert Wetzels), customer - Ten Brinke Projektentwicklung GmbH. Completion of construction - 2012. The total area of the building is 15 750 m2, the capacity of the rooftop parking is 400 cars.
Clinker: Hagemeister
Clinker facade area: approx. 3600 m2.
Oregon
NF (240 x 90 x 71 mm), (240 x 115 x 71 mm), (240 x 15 x 71 mm)
