loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_christian richters

Loddenheide Water Purification Plant

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Technical

COUNTRY: Germany

CITY: Munster

YEAR: 2021

PHOTOS: © Christian Richters,  © BOLLES+WILSON

40 Years of Water Research – 20 years of Water Pumping

The 2001 Loddenheide Water Filtration Plant is almost BOLLES+WILSON’s smallest building. It has for the last 20 years been cleaning and filtering road runoff before it lands in the re-absorption pond of the Loddenheide Business Park. The pond itself is a re-naturalizing success, now a bird sanctuary for countless water foul. The glazed vitrine of the pump house now stands serenely in winter snow or spring blossom. Its machines turn two Archimedes Screw Pumps, aerating the water before splashing into a circular filtration tank. The rectangular plan geometry of the first is set against the circular form of the second. A line of poplar trees, now fully grown, bisects these two fundamental geometries. For those inexperienced at reading metaphoric content into infrastructural equipment the fences surrounding the two machines come with subtext – although the supergraphic H2O on the fence mesh is not readable when approached front on, only when seen in the oblique is it there to underline the theme of ‘Water’.

The Business Park was at the outset renamed Freedom Park by the Dalai Lama, then visiting Münster. The Dalai Lama Commemoration Stone stands 120 meters away from the pumping facilities – just follow the line of poplars. It is certainly BOLLES+WILSON’s smallest work. To read its text one must walk three times around the dark green stone. We like to believe that the rainy day inauguration photo documents the Dalai Lama gleefully asking Münsters lady Mayor – ‘Is it really a BOLLES+WILSON design’.

BOLLES+WILSON water research began in 1976 with Peter Wilson’s Iconic Water House. In 2018 the watery trajectory continued with the second warehouse for RS+Yellow both with ‘Infinity Pool’ roofs.

loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_christian richters
Loddenheide Water Filtration Plant
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_christian richters
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_christian richters
H2O graphic on the fence mesh
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Model
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Construction
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Design for the Dalai Lama Commemoration Stone
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The Dalai Lama Commemoration Stone
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Rainy day inauguration with Dalai Lama and Munster's last Mayor
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_christian richters

Hotel Urban Loft

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Hotel
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Cologne
YEAR: 2020
Competition: –
GFA: 10.000 m2
CLIENT: EHBB Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG
USER: Althoff Hotels
USE: Hotel with 213 rooms, restaurant, underground parking, 8 apartments
PHOTOS: © Roman Mensing, BOLLES+WILSON

Young creative digital natives arriving at Cologne’s Central Station need now only to duck around the corner to spend time in URBAN LOFT – a new brand by Althoff Hotels. BOLLES+WILSON’s responsibility was the form + language of the building – a textile like street façade (Eigelstein) of warm vertical brick. The former brewery site in one of Cologne’s most traditional neighbourhoods is squashed up against railway tracks. Sound proof windows gaze at the cathedral spires + into the posterior of the station – trains rush past, only 1m from the rear façade. Also at the rear (Am Salzmagazin) stacked apartments watch this urban opera. Following a planners invective a neighbourhood networking is achieved with a passage passing internal terraces + squeezing out in the atmospheric underpass.

hotel urban loft, Koeln, Köln, Eigelstein, Peter Wilson drawing, handzeichnung
hotel urban loft, Koeln, Köln, Eigelstein, Roman Mensing
hotel urban loft, Koeln, Köln, Eigelstein, Roman Mensing
hotel urban loft, Koeln, Köln, Eigelstein, Roman Mensing
hotel urban loft, Koeln, Köln, Eigelstein, Roman Mensing
hotel urban loft, Koeln, Köln, Eigelstein, Roman Mensing
hotel urban loft, Koeln, Köln, Eigelstein, Roman Mensing
hotel urban loft, Koeln, Köln, Eigelstein, Roman Mensing
hotel urban loft, Koeln, Köln, Eigelstein, Roman Mensing
hotel urban loft, Koeln, Köln, Eigelstein, Roman Mensing
hotel urban loft, Koeln, Köln, Eigelstein, Roman Mensing
rs yellow distribution_munster_markus hauschild

RS+Yellow Distribution

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Light Industrial, Office

COUNTRY: Germany

CITY: Münster

YEAR: 2009

GFA: 9.200 sqm

CLIENT: Rainer Scholze

AWARDS: German Façade Award 2010

PHOTOS: © Guido Erbring, Markus Hauschild, Christian Richters

When is a warehouse a lake? – in Münster.

This is the third BOLLES+WILSON building for the German-wide furniture chain RS+Yellow, an extension of the homebase storage and distribution centre by 7,000 sqm. The new rectangular building volume stands adjacent to the original 1992 corrugated aluminium warehouse.

The 60 x 66 m two stores ‘Big-Box’ is (as is usual for industrial architecture) reduced to a regular grid of pre-cast columns and widespan floor slabs. Facades are a standard lightweight concrete system. Verticality is emphasised with pyjama colour stripes interspersed with zinc coated grid stripes. These absorb all windows and necessary smoke outlets into an uninterrupted colour curtain.

This warehouse and even perhaps the 1,500 sqm of offices above the delivery bays are precisely realised but relatively conventional. The big surprise comes on arriving at the rooftop meeting rooms and executive offices. Through the intervention of the fire brigade (choreographed alarm) the roof of the building has been flooded – a 45 x 65 m reflecting pool.

The edge detail, laser levelled into invisibility, increases the metaphysical unreality of this sky reflector. Underwater compartments eliviate the risk of mini-tsunamis. Spillage is collected in edge channels and channelled to an internal cistern.

A wooden boardwalk fronts the large format sliding glass facade. A pier extends out to the centre of the water world. Here one can sit surrounded by geometric groves of bamboo. From here the south facing glass front of the roof pavilion reflects again the rippling expanse of water. The facade itself is shaded by a projecting steel pergola and a curtain of louvers descending at the press of a button from its outer edge.

This choreographed overlap of inside and outside, of natural and artificial, of direct and reflected light, create a unique atmosphere which could be described as an industrial scaled Japanese Tea-House.

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Offices with open sun louvres
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Offices with closed sun louvres
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View over the rooftop pool
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View from the office with open sun louvres
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View from the office with closed sun louvres
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Warehouse façade
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Fire brigade flooding the pool
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Pool getting filled
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Ground floor plan
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Upper floor plan
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Section
technology centre_technologiehof_munster_christian richters

Technology Centre

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Office / Laboratory / Conference

COUNTRY: Germany

CITY: Munster

YEAR: 1993

GFA: 16.000 sqm

CLIENT: Technologiehof Münster GmbH

PHOTOS: © Christian Richters

The university zone of Mnster (like most of what we still call cities) is a mixture of isolated large buildings, open space and fragments of small scale, residential patterns. Rather than attempting to stitch together buildings in a coherent or unifying pattern, the Technologiehof accepts its autonomy and in doing so legitimizes the voids between as today’s characteristic urban condition.

The three discrete objects of the Technologiehof also mark an end to the city. To the north are green fields, to the south (bridge side) is the semi-urban campus. Within their precise form the façades are a consequence of this double direction.

Three precise rectilinear forms (unambiguous autonomous objects) are a consequence of the construction system: standardised precast columns, beams, wall and floor panels. The expression of technology is limited to the shiny aluminium skin.

Small, highly serviced, commercially rented laboratories (bio-sensoric research, environment and telecommunications research) flank a middle building with offices and conference facilities. Triangular tapering winter gardens at third floor level provide relief from the absorbing rigour of the working spaces.

technology centre_technologiehof_munster_christian richters
One of three rectilinear forms
technology centre_technologiehof_munster_christian richters
technology centre_technologiehof_munster_christian richters
The bridge
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Axonometric perspective
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Figure ground plan
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Ground floor plan
technology centre_technologiehof_munster_plan
First floor plan and South elevation
suzuki house_japan_ryuji miyamoto_interior

Suzuki House

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Residential
COUNTRY: Japan
CITY: Tokyo
YEAR: 1993
CLIENT: Akira Suzuki
AWARD: Goldmedal from Japanese Architects Institute 1994
PHOTOS: © Ryuji Miyamoto

A house as a large family room suspended in the city.
A house with a child’s room suspended within.
A house with two legs and a usable roof.
A house glanced by a passing Ninja (Impressed Shadow Façade).

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Street view at night
suzuki house_japan_ryuji miyamoto_street view by day
Street view at day
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Sketch
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Interior
suzuki house_japan_ryuji miyamoto_interior
suzuki house_japan_sketch
Internal organization sketches
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suzuki house_japan_isonometric
suzuki house_japan_isonometric
suzuki house_japan_isonometric
suzuki house_japan_plan
Ground floor
suzuki house_japan_plan
First floor
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Second floor
suzuki house_japan_drawing
Passing Ninja
suzuki house_japan_ryuji miyamoto_interior
Kitchen and dining room