UNDERGROUND STATIONS, KARSLRUHE, GERMANY INGO MAURER


The lighting world lost one of its more lustrous design talents when Ingo Maurer died in 2019. However, the company he founded back in 1966 is firmly grounded in his often eccentric and experimental take on lighting design. A determination to plough his own idiosyncratic creative furrow resulted in some whimsical and ingenious designs, and also inevitably raised a few eyebrows.


There is the same sort of Marmite feel to the company’s lighting solution for seven underground substations that form part of the city rail tunnel in Karlsruhe. This is an environment that, for safety reaons alone, requires a direct


and largely uniform lighting approach. It also traditionally features highly visible and utilitarian fittings, designed with performance, easy accessibility and maintenance being held firmly in mind.


The scheme, set against a clinically white interior, certainly delivers visibility in spades, with a complicated-looking steel cable construction that carries linear LED tubes. Inspired by the overhead wires of an electric railway system, it also has a slight whiff of Maurer’s classic 1980s YaYaHo. Ropes, clamps, isolators and stays are guided over a steel cable construction in


a condensed, overhead system. In an arrangement of three ropes lying next to each other and two ropes lying above each other, the light constructions seem – depending on the angle from which passengers view it – ‘like subtly arranged notes of a symphony’, says Sebastian Utermöhlen, responsible for macro projects at Ingo Maurer.


‘Subconsciously, the visitor has always been aware of the complex network of overhead lines,’ he continues. ‘For the construction of the underground substations, we wanted to keep this stylistic element in the shape of a web of light.’


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