Flower Shop at the Hamburg-Hauptbahnhof Subway Station (1959-64) in Hamburg, Germany, by Friedhelm Grundmann & Horst Sandtmann

The tower and the tunnel are the two poles of Friedhelm Grundmann’s architectural oeuvre: throughout his career Grundmann has extensively dealt with churches and subway/commuter train architecture, primarily in and around his hometown Hamburg. But although these seem to be opposing categories their communal character provided a shared point of departure for the architect: Grundmann, at the beginning together with his partner Horst Sandtmann, in both churches and stations focused his attention on the threshold, the gradual transition from the outside to the inside. By means of a skillful guidance through colors, glazing or gradual material changes Grundmann shaped this transition in a particularly sensitive way, often also with the help of art in architecture, an aspect which he as the son of an art historian had a keen sense for.

With „Turm und Tunnel - Friedhelm Grundmann baut für Kirche und U-Bahn“, edited by among others Karin Berkemann & Daniel Bartetzko and recently published by Dölling und Galitz, the first monograph on the architect is available and offers a career-spanning analysis of Grundmann‘s oeuvre. By analyzing his two major building tasks the authors demonstrate similarities and differences as well as the stylistic changes over the decades of his career. After the dissolution of the Grundmann-Sandtmann partnership in 1963 Grundmann’s idiom changed significantly and gave way to a greater plasticity inspired by Le Corbusier, an idiomatic shift that prominently shows in the architect’s own house (1964) in Hamburg and the Nathan Söderblom church in Reinbek. Concurrently commissions for the renovation, conversion or extension of subway stations were less frequent so churches and other projects gained in importance as the authors demonstrate: Grundmann not only occasionally turned to housing and corporate building but in 1975 also became professor at FH Hamburg and frequently wrote about architecture.

Right up to his death in 2015 Grundmann remained an active and critical participant of the architectural discourse and the present monograph is a many-faceted and informative portrait of the architect, his oeuvre and his theoretical reflections.

Vicelinkirche (1962) in Hamburg, Germany, by Friedhelm Grundmann & Horst Sandtmann

Church “Der Gute Hirte” (1968-70) in Hamburg, Germany, by Friedhelm Grundmann & Horst Sandtmann

Versöhnerkirche (1962-64) in Bad Segeberg, Germany, by Horst Sandtmann & Friedhelm Grundmann