The reflective surface of the ‘dark green glazed’ brick animates a monolithic self-focusing form. An ambiguous surface alternating between the brilliance of the sky or the depths of black shadow. Mass is also the subject, a single building block in the urban fabric. A block further animated by the vectorial trajectory of the adjacent railway which instigates a façade curve and lean. A relatively simple slippage whose justification lies not in its formal but its tectonic resolution. Each brick course slips out one cm from the one supporting it. For the train traveller the WLV building is an event of a few seconds, its deflection perhaps only the effect of speed, its roof perhaps only temporarily hovering.

The three floors and 7.000 sqm of offices house a branch of local government that deals with the administration of psychiatric services. Shops on the ground and rooftop canteen-restaurant complete the sandwich. A specified planning module of 1.625 m results in a deep precast concrete fin on each axis, visible structure in unpainted concrete defining a window zone for heating, cable canals and glare blinds. From inside window frames disappear behind fins, to the south sun screens extend the internal ceiling line beyond the window. Systematised cellular offices are animated by contextual deflexions in the overall plan form, resulting in serpentine office strips, floating service islands, the ‘elastic plan’. Not high but low-tech is here and in the entire building thematizing, the simple, the well made, the long lasting.

The 1990-93 shiny aluminum shed was the first of three big-box warehouse buildings built successively side by side to store and distribute furniture for the ever-expanding chain of RS + Yellow Shops. As well as this home base BOLLES+WILSON built for the same company shops/outlets in Münster, Hannover, Munich and Berlin.

The dimensions and form of the 1993 RS+Yellow Distribution – Phase 1 were prescribed by the ruins of a half-built industrial structure. The problem was to economically clad this given form.

The skin of corrugated aluminum has been seen as a reference to Australian wool sheds, a typology here projected to a length of 120 m. It landed like a UFO in its fragmented peripheral context. At the time B+W were propagating such large self-evident forms (see Technologyhof Münster 1993) to anchor and give scale to the fragmentation of ubiquitous post-industrial Eurolandschaft Fields.

The critical detail for RS+Yellow Distribution – Phase 1 was the façade section, two intersecting plates of shiny metal. Avoiding a capping plate as well as regular downpipes, that would compromise such a pure extended surface, runoff water from the barrel-vaulted roof courses down the inside surface of the upper façade panel to be delivered in turn by the lower façade panel into a pebble drain at ground level.

The rear end of this super-shed housed the office of the company owner, this subsequently moved to the spectacular Waterscape rooftop of RS+Yellow Distribution – Phase 2 built directly beside RS+Yellow Distribution – Phase 1. A third adjacent big-box was to be capped by the client’s rooftop villa (RS+Yellow Distribution – Phase 3) but his tragic death meant that it was completed as meeting rooms, standing in another infinity pool.

The anatomy of redundant bus and tram workshop/sheds was co-opted as the organising template for this 1999 premiated Quartier Masterplan. An east west piazza focusses the networked block interior.

The principles of the Masterplan were: The ‘loftising’ of one workshop shed, a brick administration building which grows into penthouses and bus garage doors which envelope row-houses.

Southward from the piazza a spatial choreography of Office Slab and Housing Tower leads over a raised terrace with a second (zigzag) office facade, past a café/bar, down an Eisenstein stair to street and canal. This perspectival sequence – an opening and closing of large scale urban rooms – is homogenised by its rich and tactile material, a ‘Hamburg-solid turf-fired brick’.

Re-scripting Korca‘s theatre:

The theatre in Korca was initially a present from Moscow prior to Albanian Communism‘s falling out with Post-Stalinist Russia.

Its Soviet classicism was then stripped back to a sort of Balkan Art déco (Illus 1).

The large triangular Theatre Square, big enough for nationalistic parades, became a subject for re-formatting when in 2009 BOLLES+WILSON won the international planning competition for the historic centre of Korca. The main axis of the now almost fully implemented masterplan is the Bulevard Shën Gjergji (St. George), the new hub of the city, a pedestrian promenade (Illus 2) culminating in the Theater Square (now anchored by BOLLES+WILSON‘s 2014 Red Bar in the Sky – which focuses the Theatre Square, the concluding phase of the B+W 2009 masterplan. The campanile which functions as a lookout tower for Korcians to appreciate the delicate grain of their historic city is located at the end of the central pedestrian boulevard (landscaping by B+W).

The next intervention was the theatre itself – quite literally given a new face (or lots of new faces). Seating capacity was increased by converting a two-tier auditorium to a large raked plane (Illus 3 +4).

The design method as with all BOLLES+WILSON Albanian projects involved Peter Wilson‘s hand drawn concept (Illus 5) interpreted by a local facilitating office (in this case DEA Studio). A methodology that baits ‘lost in translation‘ misinterpretations (as was the case here when the contractors were found scratching their heads at a book of ‘Albanian Bling Renderings‘ but no details, a problem solved by Peter Wilson further sketching, this time 1:1 details direct on the wall).

The masks of comic and tragedy belong to theatre iconography, here they are joined by 140 smaller masks – the audience, hand crafted in terracotta by the local potter Vasillaq Kolevica (Illus 6+8). The 80 cm high individualized masks each occupy a grid square of the Art déco facade. The black tragic mask is convex, the white comic mask is concave – the construction principles for these were again hand sketched.

The comic mask is on a side annex (that now houses an internal grand stair), a cube clad in black basalt (Illus 10+13). The perimeter of the mask is defined by a stainless steel profile inside of which the white plaster indentation is recessed. The ominous black silhouette of the tragic mask is built up of polystyrene insulation blocks (Illus 11+12+14). Edge radii were sketched but ultimately a 1:1 demonstration with a bread knife was necessary to communicate the idea to he builders. The surface here is again plastered to resemble a giant Japanese ‘ No-theatre‘ mask (Illus 14+15).