Berlin above and below ground
As an architect and city planner Alfred Grenander was ”the Swede building in Berlin”. Above all he was involved with the development of the Berlin underground railway. This exhibition provides an overview of the broad oeuvre of Grenander, concentrating on his designs for stations and vehicles, but also including his designs for residential buildings, interiors and furniture.
Alfred Grenander was born in June 1863 in Skövde, Sweden, and came to Berlin in 1885 to study. The city became his home, and he constructed his first buildings together with his brother- in-law Otto Spalding.
Alfred Grenander left his mark on Berlin's public transport like no other. He decorated the steel supports for the first elevated line, and designed ticket offices and entrances. He used tiles to create underground colour-fields and deployed clever light effects like the columns that apparently end in thin air at Alexanderplatz. We also have Grenander to thank for the visual appearance of tube carriages, double-decker buses and excursion vehicles.
Even before his work on the underground railway, the young Grenander already enjoyed a reputation in Berlin. His earliest works include villas and mansions, for which he also designed the interiors. At the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis he was celebrated as “ the great renewer of German art”. He was buried in Falsterbo, in the south of Sweden, where he and his family had spent all the summers since 1907 in their summerhouse ”Villa Tångvallen”.
September 13-January 6, 2008
The seminar Berlin: the culture of the Metropol will be held at Arkitekturmuseet on October 27.