City Library Helmond
TYPOLOGY: Cultural
COUNTRY: The Netherlands
CITY: Helmond
YEAR: 2010
COMPETITION: 2006, First Prize
GFA: 5.630 sqm
CKIENT: City of Helmond
COLLABORATOR: Vrencken Hoen Architecten
AWARD: Fritz Hoeger Preis 2014, Winner Special Mention
PHOTOS: © Christian Richters
Like most Dutch cities Helmond is busy reinventing itself. The new City Library, which officially opens in October 2010, is the first component of a comprehensive new inner city shopping zone (masterplan: Prof. Joan Busquets). Directly adjacent to the new library are the 1970’s Tree Houses and Theatre by Piet Blom. Here the new library facade is moulded and sloped in dialogue with its dramatic neighbour. A between space, a block internal café terrace, a comfortable and dramatic extension of the existing enclosed Theatre Square is the result of this spatial symbiosis.
The outer, street-facing facade is the representative face and entrance of the new library. Upper level projections mark the extremities, brackets (ears) carrying large-format ‘Bibliotheek’ letters. A horizontal facade articulation differentiates ground level shops from glazed and setback first floor (Children’s Library) and the brick surface of the upper office level.
A careful detailing and material choice for external surfaces provides a ‘tactility’ fitting to the historic Helmond city centre. Rough dark brown and unusually horizontal bricks (Hilversum format 50 x 290 mm) on upper levels have open vertical joints and a beige horizontal mortar joint, stressing the layered grain of the brickwork. In contrast the base is in a flat beige brick (in 3 different heights – 50, 100, 140 mm). These are not laid in mortar, but glued together – resulting in a stone-like solidity and homogeneity.
The internal spaces of the library are developed as an unfolding spatial sequence. Much of the ground floor is given over to retail. Entry is from both sides – via a generous double height entrance hall to the street side and via the more intimate café and event corner facing the Theatre Court. The upward sequence is announced by a grand stair, which arrives at a first floor exhibition deck and the ‘piano nobile’ of the library. Here information stations, bookshelves and children / teenager zones are arranged around a central media Hot Spot: precisely circular, a Chinese-red sandwich. The Hot Spot offers the digital latest. The route continues upward concluding in the light-filled upper level with a long working bench integrated in the long ‘tree house-facing’ window.
BOLLES+WILSON’s commission also included furniture and lighting elements, the choreographing of atmosphere and character. Lanterns in the foyer, a newspaper reading table, a striped and upholstered café bench seat with Scandinavian lighting, information counters and a group study room with fragments of a 1950’s mural mounted on the wall, are among the long list of localised detail. The philosophy is one of multiplicity, a user-friendly comfort already much appreciated by librarians and reading Helmonders.
Blackburn House
TYPOLOGY: Residential
COUNTRY: UK
CITY: London
YEAR: 1987
PHOTOS: © BOLLES+WILSON
No grand statement rather a series of practical opportunities. First the restructuring of the row of rundown Mews Houses into a new white box. A large window breaks through the white façade, the view is not good, the glass is opaque, blinded.
Ground floor office, a two floor apartment housing, a collection; Barry Flanagan (hare), Scott Burton (chair), Andy Warhol (portrait), Bruce McLean (table), Ron Arad (table), Jasper Morrison (sofa). Interior details are added to this list – supporting column and cantilevered balcony in steel, a vitrine, a floating boat – seat – handrail – individual narratives in a limited range of materials.
The upper floor with its 14 m skylight-wall functions as gallery, the lower lobby as chair hall. Sitting on the central barge seat the visitor has reached the vortex of the composition hovering like the house itself, not quite part of London.
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.
Dub House
TYPOLOGY: Residential
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Münster
YEAR: 1993
PHOTOS: © BOLLES+WILSON
The principal element, a Blue Glazed Brick Wall corrects a disastrous alteration and also breaks the tyranny of uniform ceiling height.
The second added element, a Zinc Clad Studio Box stands adjacent the Blue Wall. The two set up an external and internal play – geometric volumes – the abstract language of the plan respected and developed.
A very modest commission, careful details with the potential of enhancing the everyday lives of their users.
Red Bar in the Sky
TYPOLOGY: Public
COUNTRY: Albania
CITY: Korça
YEAR: 2014
CLIENT: Municipality of Korça
PHOTOS: © Andronira Burda, Daniel Dervishi, Nico Peleshi, Roman Mensing
In time for Christmas 2014 the city of Korça in Albania realized BOLLES+WILSON’s design for a campanile – the Red Bar in the Sky. It focuses the Theatre Square, the concluding phase of the B+W 2009 masterplan (International Competition 1st prize). The campanile which functions as a lookout tower for Korcians to appreciate the delicate grain of their city is located at the end of the central pedestrian boulevard ‘Shën Gjergji’ (landscaping by B+W). Opened in winter the Red Bar in the Sky was accompanied by an ice skating rink installed by Greek skating specialists.
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Related project:
Masterplan Korça City Centre, 2009, 1st prize
