In the past, a lot was built in red. Before bricks were just another building material, most buildings had a reddish glow. The more iron oxide in the earth, the stronger the color of the clay. One of the oldest brick buildings is the step temple in honor of the moon god Nanna in today's Iraq. The place of worship is a remnant of the reign of the Sumerian king Ur-Nammu, built more than 4,000 years ago.

From Mesopotamia the brick technique then came to the Romans. They improved the ancient oriental style by using lime mortar, which allowed for more stable buildings. In ancient Pompeii, wealthy citizens additionally painted their villas red. The rarer and more exclusive the color components and thus the color, the better. Red developed into the color of the elite.

North of the Alps, brick technology laid the foundation stone for the brick romance. Especially in the Baltic Sea region, in northern Germany and in Denmark, the red bricks emerged. The oldest brick church in Northern Europe, the 1160 completed St. John's Church in Oldenburg in Holstein, dates back to that time. During Gothic, the brick architecture even extended to England. In the 16th century brick Gothic was replaced by the brick renaissance.

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Red Architecture: Varied monochrome

Two centuries later, and thousands of miles further east, red was still the color of the rulers. The Maharajah Jai Singh II had the capital of his princely state Jaipur mostly built of red sandstone. Commissioned by his successor, Sawaj Pratap Singh, the Palace of the Winds is still the landmark of the Indian city. Since 1876, the Prince of Wales has been visiting, the old town district is pink. It was painted in the traditional color of hospitality in honor of the former colonial ruler.

A little later, red was no longer a sign of aristocrats. From the 19th century, the Socialists wrote the color on the flags. "Red is the cloth that we unfurl, sticking to the people's blood", reads the text of a Polish worker's song from 1881. The Red Square in Moscow is called so because the Russian adjective for "beautiful" originally meant "red" could. (Before it meant only "red", so was the beautiful place from the speech.) The designation fits well into the political color theory.

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Stella Paul:
Red: Architecture in Monochrome

Phaidon; 224 pages, 35 euros

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Today, visible red is rarely in demand in architecture. In this country, the color is usually found in roof tiles or in the form of the red light district. In Sweden there are comparatively many red houses. But what provokes scandinavia yearning on holiday photos, has little to do with aesthetics and much with conservation: The facade painting - touched by by-products of the mining industry oil, flour and water - protects the wood from the weather and pests.

By contrast, in the 150 buildings in the illustrated book "Red: Architecture in Monochrome", the architects deliberately set the creative force of color. Starting with a Inari Shrine in Kyto from the year 711 to a private house completed in 2017 in Peru - every design is represented. Part of the 1306 years comprehensive picture journey is the new Zollhof in Düsseldorf by Frank Gehry. The book is introduced by an essay by the art historian Stella Paul. 156 color photographs then show how beautiful it can be when architects see red.