Hafencity Universität in Hamburg

The Hafencity Universität Station is a U-Bahn station in Hamburg famous for its gorgeous futuristic colourful illumination. For us, it looked like a movie set, something out of Blade Runner and we knew we had to go there.

In October 2021, we visited Hamburg once again, and we asked around on Instagram for tips. We were looking for some unusual sights. One person advised us to take our cameras to the Hafencity Universität Station. We had never heard about this station before so we were sceptical, but once we saw some pictures of it, we were sold on that.

The Hafencity Universität Station opened to the public in November 2012. The station’s design was done by an architecture firm called Raupach Architekten, based in Munich. Visually speaking, their design uses the ever-changing colour changes of the HafenCity as a metaphor for the colourful lights inside the station. The blues in the stations represent the water; the reds are the red brick from the wharf buildings and the metals from the ships that pass by.

The light structure that is the main element at Hafencity Universität Station is 135 meters long and is surrounded by steel walls, which create a genuinely futuristic feel to the station. And, each one of the wall panels has been individually treated, so each one of them is unique.

The colourful Hafencity Universität Station 

Once you leave your train, you will really feel like you’re somewhere new. Above the platform, there are large containers that hover above the heads of everyone that leaves the trains there. They change colours and, as we said above, interpret the mood of the area. Also, they vary based on the season of the year and the weather!

According to our research on the Hafencity Universität Station, the twelve containers can light up asynchronously and with different colours, making these light installations feel more organic.

So, the pictures that you can see here are not the only visual presentation of this station. It looks fantastic already but knowing that more than can be done with these lights makes everything more attractive. On public holidays and weekends, between 10 in the morning and 6 in the evening, light and music compositions are performed every full hour, creating a performance space out of the subway station. The light in the containers changes colour to match classical music.

It must be quite a beautiful experience, but we didn’t manage to see this since we passed by the station on a Tuesday afternoon. And, outside of these times, slow colour transitions take place, which looks impressive, as you can imagine from the pictures we are sharing here. Maybe, one day, we can even see the musical light show there!

If you are curious about seeing the light show at Hafencity Universität Station, you can follow the map below or take the U4 line in Hamburg, in the direction of U-Bahn Elbbrücken. The Hafencity is the second to last station on that line.

Suppose you are interested in reading more about subway stations. In that case, we have one about the Moscow subway, another about St. Petersburg and another one about the Ghost Stations that Berlin used to have.

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