Eemcentrum Masterplan
TYPOLOGY: Masterplan
COUNTRY: The Netherlands
CITY: Amersfoort
YEAR: 2008
GFA: 60.000 sqm
CLIENT: AM Vastgoed, Gouda / City of Amersfoort
Direct Planning Commission (City of Amersfoort) 2003
The Eemcentrum is a new cultural, leisure and residential quartier directly adjacent to the historic city centre. Cinema, housing and commercial components in combination with new city library, art school and pop podium face a conical and sloped square/garden which expands perspectively over its 200 m length. This scenographic choreography developed by BOLLES+WILSON constitutes the aesthetic and legal masterplan for the individual building commissions. Peter Wilson was also planning supervisor monitoring and coordinating the architectural development of the urban ensemble.
Eemblock – O’Donnell + Tuomey
Row Houses – Drost + van Veen
Cinema – Koen van Velsen
Shopping/Housing/Offices – Mecannoo
Library/Art School/Pop Podium – Neutelings Riedijk
Landscaping – Sant en Co
Housing at St. Sebastian
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.
KALDEWEI COMPETENCE CENTER
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 mold by robotic arms (the steel screams while being pressed into shape). Tubs are then enameled, the historic but still functioning enamel kiln is glimpsed as the conclusion of the visitor’s trajectory through the new information and exhibition center. 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. Toweling 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 artifacts was sketched but not realized.
Studios Frobenstraße 1
TYPOLOGY: Residential
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Berlin-Schöneberg
YEAR: 2020
GFA: 2.300 sqm
CLIENT: Frobenstraße 1 GbR
AWARDS: BDA Preis – nominated
PHOTOS: © Aya Schamoni
INTERIOR APARTMENT 9: studio f1 (Jack Wilson, Chris Geseke)
Finished in late 2020 Frobenstraße 1 offers for renting 11 variously sized apartments and 2 commercial units in an area of fashionable shops and galleries (Potsdamer Straße), street prostitution, social housing and huge investor driven developments of owner occupied apartments.
Frobenstraße 1 is a chorus member. It is not a Primadonna that steps out to front stage. The choreography of urban choruses is the Großstadt-DNA of Berlin, Paris or Barcelona. It defines the street line and the eaves line. In Frobenstraße 1 the upper facade limit is articulated with a recessed shadow line, a modest but significant detail.
The well behaved chorus anticipates a fictive future block-perimeter conclusion to the south, where there is now a Kindergarten with luxurious trees. Here the pink side wall (fire wall) presents itself for the kids with its giant footprint graphic.
Unlike the Bel étage of a Paris House the first floor here has the standard 3,10 m room height, but its special relation to the street is prescribed by the delicate and continuous railing.
The window composition to the street describes the internal layout where three apartments break out of the standard, but generous room height to 4,80 m and 6,50 m. The grey facade has therefore aspirations to be read as a palazzo, with the projecting penthouse window playing the classic attica.
The garden facade is more domestic, balconies meandering out for afternoon sun and individual planting.
For the interior communal stair and lift black and white tiles dignify homecoming.
Albanian Football Association Headquarters Tirana
TYPOLOGY: Administration Offices
COUNTRY: Albania
CITY: Tirana
YEAR: 2020
PHOTOS: © Roman Mensing, BOLLES+WILSON
LOCAL ARCHITECTS: APE Shpk
The commission was first for the reuse of a derelict crescent shaped communist building, (Illus 2A), not a comfortable fit for open plan offices and upper level president and executive council rooms. `X´columns were here invented to support the top-heavy layout. These survived the decision to demolish and build a new headquarters. Both layouts framed a green field site embraced by a ring of trees. Existing pines were also retained.
Layout – Four levels of open plan offices lurk behind the ambulant `X´ Colonnade. These are for the various departments: event management, national team dept, marketing, referees, finance, legal, human resources, drivers etc. (Illus. 7 + 8).
The rear side entrance is themed green and blue with a canopy and raised entrance plaza above a press and conference
room for 180. (Illus. 9. 3.4.5.6.)
Albania is now embedded in the UEFA international football circuit and the success of their HQ has led to the 2925 commission for BOLLES+WILSON to design a partner building on the same site – A 5-star Hotel for the Albanian National Team (Illus. 14).
A SECOND BUILDING ON THE SAME SITE.
2025-2029