VASARELY TOWER

Detail

RRUGA ALI PASHA GUCIA

TIRANA

FOR CHRISTIN INVESTMENTS 2025

CONCEPT
The theme of the Vasarely Tower design is derived from the hungarian pop artist Victor Vasarely who used simple geometric shapes and strong contrasting colours. The Vasarely Museum in Aixen-Provence interprets Vasarelys paintings as a building. For our proposal the horizontal museum becomes a vertical tower.

Reference Vasarely Museum in Aix-en-Provence
The tower is based on a 12,5 m by 12,5 m plan with circular loggia, bringing daylight deep into the appartments.
Within the loggia all surfaces and windowframes are coloured pink RAL 3014 (Vasarely colour contrast).
cologne-muelheim harbour district_koeln-muelheimer hafen_cologne_koeln

Cologne-Muelheim Harbour District

Detail

TYPOLOGY Masterplan

COUNTRY: Germany

CITY: Cologne

YEAR: 2013 – (2015)

COMPETITION: 2013, dialogic planning process
‘Werkstattverfahren Mülheim Süd Inkl. Hafen’

CLIENT: Stadt Köln

After a dialogic planning process in 2013, the two competing planning teams around kister scheithauser gross (Cologne) and BOLLES+WILSON have teamed up for the next planning stage. The development of Mülheim’s harbour district is still an on-going process integrating various interests and disciplines. The masterplan for this 52 ha harbour area preserves various grand industrial spaces to create a new district with a unique character and atmosphere.

cologne-muelheim harbour district_koeln-muelheimer hafen_cologne_koeln_aerial view_luftbild
cologne-muelheim harbour district_koeln-muelheimer hafen_cologne_koeln_plan_schwarzplan
cologne-muelheim harbour district_koeln-muelheimer hafen_cologne_koeln_sketch
cologne-muelheim harbour district_koeln-muelheimer hafen_cologne_koeln_sketch
cologne-muelheim harbour district_koeln-muelheimer hafen_cologne_koeln_sketch
cologne-muelheim harbour district_koeln-muelheimer hafen_cologne_koeln_sketch
cologne-muelheim harbour district_koeln-muelheimer hafen_cologne_koeln_sketch
cologne-muelheim harbour district_koeln-muelheimer hafen_cologne_koeln
cologne-muelheim harbour district_koeln-muelheimer hafen_cologne_koeln
cologne-muelheim harbour district_koeln-muelheimer hafen_cologne_koeln_masterplan
cologne-muelheim harbour district_koeln-muelheimer hafen_cologne_koeln

BAZAAR GATE

Detail

CITY: Tirana

CLIENT: The Bregu Group

YEAR: 2024 – 2028

LOCAL FACILITATING OFFICE: X-PLAN

A 23 floor residential tower crowned by 5 floors of golden penthouses. It stands between Tirana’s central Skanderbeg Square and the revitalized Bazaar. A back seat to the Prime Minister promoted cluster of mega statements that will line up next to the gold façade of BOLLES+WILSON’s 2025  Intercontinental  Hotel. We have sketched our golden cones against the pink matrix of Tirana’s jumbled DNA, punctuated by two more BOLLES+WILSON planned projects – The Lets Twist Again Tower and in the background the Vasarely Tower. We are grateful to Edi Rama for pumping Bazaar Gate’s original 15 floors to the 28 floors now under construction.

ORIGINAL 15 FLOOR

BAZAAR GATE CONCEPT

WEST ELEVATION - 28 FLOORS
NORTH ELEVATION
SOUTH ELEVATION - 28 FLOORS
EAST ELEVATION
SETBACK REQUIREMENTS DETERMINE PLANS
BAMBOO PRINTED FACADE - RENDERING X-PLAN

FAÇADE EVELOUTION

First came a Bamboo leaf printed pattern. Then in a workshop two façade proposals by X-Plan our Albanian collaborators were mathematically synthesized to produce the window/loggia matrix.

FROM THE SHOPPING COURT

CONCEPT B+W

RENDERINGS X-PLAN

PENTHOUSE REFINEMENT

As with all BOLLES+WILSON projects the penthouses were fine-tuned in an iterative exchange between sketched ambiences/compositions and the exactitude of digital co-ordination/technical requirements. The final, somewhat Chinese, sketch dissolves the golden crown in a nirvana of cloud.

Münster City Library

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Cultural

COUNTRY: Germany

CITY: Münster

YEAR: 1993

COMPETITION: 1987, First Prize

CLIENT: City of Münster

COLLABORATOR: Harms & Partner (in realization phase)

AWARDS: Mies van der Rohe Award 1995, Nomination
German Architecture Award 1995, Commendation

PHOTOS: © Christian Richters, Julia Cawley (update 2010)

The Münster Library was BOLLES+WILSON’s first major public commission. After more than ten years it remains near the top of Germany’s ‘library-user-ranking-list’. A verification not only of functionality but also of the attention to detail, to spatial multiplicity and to the ambience and atmosphere within.

The complexities of the overall building form are derived from internal organisation and from a careful re-constitution of the fragmented context. A new pedestrian street on the axis of the nearby Lamberti Church divides the not inconsiderable mass of the Library. This fissure in the library volume is closed with folded screens (copper outside, acoustically absorbing perforated wood panels within).

A transparent entrance zone (café, newspaper salon) leads via an information supermarket to the main information desk on the connecting bridge. This in turn is adjacent to book stacks in the ship-like outer volume. The atmosphere is quiet, studious. Books line the outer curved wall, a dramatic stair leads down through a 22 m void to the basement media library, which connects in turn to the courtyard facing children’s library and back up to the entrance zone. Up to four thousand users enter the Münster Library on one day.

+ + +

Münster City Library – Update 2010
With a newly painted facade and new automatic check out and 24-hour return automat the Münster City Library in its 18th year remains near the top of the German public library ranking list.

Stadtbücherei Münster, City Library, Exterior, main entrance, Eingang
Stadtbücherei Münster, City Library, Exterior
Stadtbücherei Münster, City Library, Exterior, Christian Richters
Stadtbücherei Münster, City Library, Julia Cawley, Interior
Stadtbücherei Münster, City Library, Christian Richters, Interior
Stadtbücherei Münster, City Library, Julia Cawley, Exterior, Buchrückgabe
Stadtbücherei Münster, City Library, Interior, meeting room
Stadtbücherei Münster, City Library, Christian Richters, Interior
Stadtbücherei Münster, City Library, Christian Richters, Interior
Stadtbücherei Münster, City Library, plan, Grundriss, 1. Etage, 1st floor
Stadtbücherei Münster, City Library, plan, Grundriss, 1. Etage, 1st floor
Stadtbücherei Münster, City Library, Exterior, elevation, Ansicht, Fassade
Stadtbücherei Münster, City Library, Exterior, section, schnitt
Stadtbücherei Münster, City Library, Exterior, section, schnitt
Stadtbücherei Münster, City Library, Exterior, isometry, isometrie
Stadtbücherei Münster, City Library, Isometrie, Exterior
housing at st sebastian_munster_roman mensing_north facade

Housing at St. Sebastian

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Residential
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Münster
YEAR: 2016
COMPETITION: 2009, 1st prize
GFA: 8.180 sqm
CLIENT: Wohn + Stadtbau GmbH
AWARDS: “Exemplary publicly funded residential projects” – North Rhine-Westphalia Regional Prize for Architecture,
Housing and Urban Development 2017
BDA Münster-Münsterland award for best buildings 2017,
honorable mention
PHOTOS: © Roman Mensing, BOLLES+WILSON

In 2009 BOLLES+WILSON won the 1st prize for housing and a kindergarten on the site of the 1960ies St Sebastian Church. It was expected that the emblematic oval form of the church be demolished. Instead the kindergarten colonized the nave. It was opened in 2013 – a much published reuse with interior green weather protected play decks.

2015 phase 2 was complete, a peripheral frame of housing protecting the kindergarten from a noisy street and giving a precise edge to the adjacent park.

Market realities are clearly visible in the differentiation of the social (subsidized) housing with its bright white and pink plaster facade to Hammer Str. and the owner-occupied flats with their noble dark brick facade facing the mature trees in the park.

One corner tree is explicitly embraced by the projecting white sheet of the street facade.

Only kitchen and bathroom windows are allowed to receive traffic noise; living rooms and balconies turn inwards to the quiet green space surrounding the kindergarten.

Unexpected colour animates the lift and stair tower and the setback roof apartments. This polychrome trope also animates the skyline of the park elevation. Here big white frames give a grand order, a vertical hierarchy. But ultimately it is the grandeur of the existing trees that claim the status of leading actors in the spatial choreography.

housing at st sebastian_munster_roman mensing_facade
Street façade embracing the tree
housing at st sebastian_munster_roman mensing_north facade detail
Façade facing the park
housing at st sebastian_munster_roman mensing_north facade
Façade and autumnal trees
housing at st sebastian_munster_roman mensing_kindergarten
Façade facing the kindergarten
housing at st sebastian_munster_roman mensing_facade
housing at st sebastian_munster_roman mensing_facade
housing at st sebastian_munster_roman mensing_kindergarten
housing at st sebastian_munster_roman mensing_facade
Dark brick façade detail
housing at st sebastian_munster_roman mensing_facade
Façade embracing the tree
housing at st sebastian_munster_roman mensing_siteplan
Siteplan
housing at st sebastian_munster_roman mensing_plan
Standard floor plan