Himmelsscheibe Exhibition Centre
TYPOLOGY: Cultural
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Nebra
YEAR: 2004
COMPETITION: Invited competition
AWARDS: Special price
An observation Tower connects an archaeological dig to its wider landscape. Nearby the Corten clad visitors centre with its cargo of sky disk (4,000 years old sky map) paraphernalia wriggles a few metres above rolling fields casting at its extremity a laconic glance skywards.
KALDEWEI COMPETENCE CENTRE
TYPOLOGY: Retail
COUNTRY: German
CITY: Ahlen
YEAR: 2005
COMPETITION: Invited, 1ˢᵗ Prize
GFA: 1.460 sqm
CLIENT: Franz Kaldewei GmbH & Co. KG
PHOTOS: © Christian Richters, © 2024 Walter Knoll
TALE OF THE TUB
Kaldewei are the Mercedes of bath manufacturers. Their robust 3.5mm tubs are formed over an iron mould by robotic arms (the steel screams while being pressed into shape). Tubs are then enamelled, the historic but still functioning enamel kiln is glimpsed as the conclusion of the visitor’s trajectory through the new information and exhibition centre. Façade planks (wrapping both new visitor facilities, adjacent smelting plant and warehouse) are enameled in the colours used for bathtubs. Entrance is across the paved plan of the original Kaldewei family villa, nearby are terracotta vats used in the nineteenth century for transporting vitreous enamel crystals.
KKC Plan at Ground level - PROMENADE ARCHITECTURAL
The façade Screens - plunging into a tub or choosing a whirlpool bath are discrete activities. The lobby is clad in a cosy mosaic of wooden panels with integrated lights and air outlets. The promenade architectural sequence leads up past a Bizatza tiled shower niche. Below - the wardrobe lurks behind the purple memory of the absent Kaldewei family house.
KKC Plan at upper level -EXHIBITION SALON
Like Carl Andre artworks, bathtub and shower tray designs are clustered in groups of four - spot-lit minimalist sculptures. On the grey salon end-wall are coloured wax circles by artist Gro Luhn. Beyond the salon visitors look down to the firey drama of the enamel kiln.
KKC Plan at lower level – PLUNGE CELLS
Purchasing a luxury whirlpool bath is similar to buying a small car, one demands a test drive or in this case a test bath. Towelling robes are donned in changing pods before progressing to sensuous cells, each with its own gestalt and bath model. Busloads of potential customers arrive from all over Europe engendering interesting sociological observations - Germans each require new bath water while Belgians are happy to sit in the water of the previous bather. Back in the lobby a gallery exhibition of historic bath artefacts was sketched but not realised.
CITADEL + THRINON HENGELO NL. 2005
TYPOLOGY: Residential
COUNTRY: The Netherlands
CITY: Hengelo
YEAR: 2005
GFA: 25.000 sqm
PARTNER: Bureau Boukunde, Rotterdam
PHOTOS: © BOLLES+WILSON
While paying our last respects to the soon to be demolished V&D department store in Hengelo we revisited our 2005 housing ensemble around the corner.
CITADEL + THRINON
(formally known as THIEMSLAND)
BOLLES+WILSON 1998–2005
Generous balconies in the three Citadel buildings overlook the expansive park.
Balcony planting signals happy occupants (blocks J + I)
Like all BOLLES+WILSON projects, the (then called) Thiemsland choreography
began with a hand sketch
Hotel Urban Loft
TYPOLOGY: Hotel
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Cologne
YEAR: 2020
GFA: 10.000 sqm
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.
Inselpark Entrance Complex
TYPOLOGY: Office, Residential
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Hamburg
YEAR: 2013
COMPETITION: Invited Competition 2011, First Prize
PHOTOS: © Markus Dorfmüller, Johanna Klier
The masterplan required two towers to mark the entrance to the Garden Show and Building exhibition. The big-brother of the pair, the giant, striped (Jacobs-coat) Sauerbruch and Hutton building, a new hive for Hamburg’s Planning Department (BSU) was not, according to the competition brief, to be upstaged by its neighbour. Already at the outset the bumpy road forward was in evidence when the black facade (no competition for polychromy) of the premiated BOLLES+WILSON entry was rejected by the developers of the railway-track side of the same block – not the right statement for their housing for the elderly. The facade mutated to green. “No green”, said the same developer, green is the colour of their chairman’s football team’s archrivals. The architects insisted that football allegiances is not a credible basis for urban planning decisions, and supported by the ubiquitous director of planning, the corner tower remained green. To get planning approval the developers were caused to sign a commitment that the green ceramic façade, a thematicised official entry to the Garden Show, would not be compromised during planning and construction. A wise requirement as fast track planning was necessitated by delays due to wobbly project financing around 2011. Further down the track a rapid rethink of the green facade was again necessitated by ‘just-in-time’ scheduling. The planed gluing of the rippled ceramic tile stripes would have to happen in winter (sub zero temperatures render glues impotent). A dry system of hung ceramic panels was at the last minute chosen and the respectfully stepping facade arrived as the IBA building exhibition opened.
The 9-floor tower is a medical centre, highly installed individual doctors rooms. Apartments and duplex penthouses with sculptural cut-out balconies occupy the top three floors. A darkening of the green ceramic facade signals a separate function for the four-floor wing to the south. This is the InselAkademie promoting sport for teenagers – not only from the surrounding Wilhelmsburg dockland district, characterised by social housing, immigration and unemployment. The upper floors of the InselAkadamie are group apartments for sporting youth and the lower two floors seminar and the temporary administration rooms of the IBA (International Building Exhibition). This building is in fact the hub of the IBA and also post IBA activities.
