Moebelum

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Retail

COUNTRY: Germany

CITY: Munich

YEAR: 2016

GFA EXISTING: 4.047 sqm

GFA NEW: 755 sqm

CLIENT: Möbelum Zentral GmbH

PHOTOS: © Florian Holzherr

Möbelum furniture outlet – a new facade for an existing industrial building/furniture showroom.

The stacked cassettes of the display facade integrate existing office windows.

Möbelum, München, Munich, Foto, Florian Holzherr
Möbelum, München, Munich, Foto, Florian Holzherr
Möbelum, München, Munich, Foto, Florian Holzherr
Möbelum, München, Munich, Foto, Florian Holzherr
Möbelum, München, Munich, Drawing, Sketch, Peter Wilson, Zeichnung
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

Wohn + Stadtbau Housing Association Headquarters

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Office

COUNTRY: Germany

CITY: Münster

YEAR: 2004

COMPETITION: 2001, First prize

CLIENT: Wohn und Stadtbau GmbH

PHOTOS: © Christian Richters

Entering the city from the north, a straight road, at the apex of its perspectival triangle a silhouette of cathedral and other church towers. Progressing into this picture, slightly downhill the view is gradually obscured, the outer traffic ring crossed.

The next 500 m rise, not a dramatic topography but enough to awaken expectation – ‘up there I will be in the city’. Buildings on the right enclose and to some extent counteract the latent drama of this ascent, this arrival. The left is undergoing a transformation, a re-configuring, a chance for a modulated roofline to enhance topographic character.

This is the intention of the sculpted silhouette of the new offices of the ‘Wohn+Stadtbau’ Housing Association. Its crest location is critical. The structured plaster façades of both volumes do not just echo but enhance site topography and the drama of entrance.

Entering the building involves a counter and smaller scale spatial sequence. The building front steps back from the heavily trafficked street to a transparent foyer. The ground floor facilitates intensive visitor traffic, waiting spaces extend into the internal court and playground.

Wohn und Stadtbau Housing Association Headquarters_munster_christian richters
Wohn und Stadtbau Housing Association Headquarters_munster_christian richters
Wohn und Stadtbau Housing Association Headquarters_munster_christian richters
Wohn und Stadtbau Housing Association Headquarters_munster_christian richters
Wohn und Stadtbau Housing Association Headquarters_munster_plan
Wohn und Stadtbau Housing Association Headquarters_munster_collage

NEW HIT – Hotel International Tirana

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Hotel

COUNTRY: Albania

CITY: Tirana

YEAR: 2016-2025

ARCHITECTS: BOLLES+WILSON with Atelier 4

PHOTOS: © BOLLES+WILSON

New HIT was the working title of this project for the Albanian investor Mr. Ram Geci – it has now been franchised to the INTERCONTINENTAL hotel chain.

THINNESS – The gold New HIT façade terminates Tirana’s central axis, the result of a 1930s regulatory plan by Geheraldo Bossio and Fernando Poggi (Italian occupation).
THINNESS – The hotel is adjacent to the grand and elegant 2017 Scanderbeg Square by the Belgians 51N4E.
THINNESS – in the east and west elevations the hotel is read as two thin slabs - black to the north and gold to the south.
LAYERING – the black slab backs the gold façade, in front of this stands the white Hotel Tirana (the tallest building in Albania under Communism). To the left is the Albanian National Museum (a gift from Russia). To the right even MDRDV’s Skanderbeg (national hero) glances sideways wishing he also could be golden.
EVOLUTION - First sketches engendering the 2 slab sandwich concept.
EVOLUTION - Inverted `V´ windows originally occupied the south façade.
EVOLUTION - These at night became a woven golden curtain.
EVOLUTION - Inverted `V´ windows with projecting cowl (sun screening)
EVOLUTION - Illuminated gold curtain - with double windows.
EVOLUTION - Windows taking in two hotel rooms are marshalled into rectangular cassettes.
EVOLUTION - WINDOW DECLINATION - Like Lucretian Clinamen the windows are in flux, swerving out of alignment with the gold façade which each illuminates with its concealed LED strip (left hand window surround).
EVOLUTION - Window details - the central coloured panels screen ventilation slits to two hotel rooms.
EVOLUTION - Ordered windows -Tirana jumble - grand mountains.
LOST IN TRANSLATION - An eight year evolution from initial concept to grand physical object is an act of translation. It is thus inevitable that certain generative ideas are lost in translation.
LOST IN TRANSLATION - The Hotel Lobby Sketch was instrumental in getting the Prime Minister’s approval, it survived much of the journey but not the appearance of an Italian interior designer who arrived when the 5 Star hotel was franchised to the INTERCONTINENTAL chain.
LOST IN TRANSLATION - This was also the fate of the BOLLES+WILSON conference hall, also the initial room gestalt.
Another Lost in Translation victim was rooftop terraces - too windy 100m up.
LOST IN TRANSLATION - The late arrival of a Casino almost engendered a gold and red staircase balanced over car park ramps.
LOST IN TRANSLATION - As Louis Kahn once noted – the drama of a building’s making is lost when complete. For the New HIT tower construction (as always) first went dramatically downwards.
When finished a tower becomes a family member in an emerging URBAN COLLAGE. From left to right – BOLLES +WILSON, MDRDV, CEBRA, Alejandro Aravena (Elemental), BOLLES+WILSON’s under construction Bazaar Gate (in the backseat).
Korca, Teatri Andon Z. Çajupi, theatre, albania, albanien

Teatri Andon Z Cajupi

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Cultural

COUNTRY: Albania

CITY: Korça

YEAR: 2017

CLIENT: Municipality of Korça

PHOTOS: © BOLLES+WILSON, Daniel Dervishi, Roman Mensing

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).

Korca, Teatri Andon Z. Çajupi, theatre, albania, albanien
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Korca, Teatri Andon Z. Çajupi, theatre, albania, albanien, red bar in the sky
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Korca, Teatri Andon Z. Çajupi, theatre, albania, albanien
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Korca, Teatri Andon Z. Çajupi, theatre, albania, albanien
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Korca, Teatri Andon Z. Çajupi, theatre, albania, albanien, drwawing
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Korca, Teatri Andon Z. Çajupi, theatre, albania, albanien, masks
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Korca, Teatri Andon Z. Çajupi, theatre, albania, albanien, mask, peter wilson
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Korca, Teatri Andon Z. Çajupi, theatre, albania, albanien, masks
8 The curtain goes up on the masks
Korca, Teatri Andon Z. Çajupi, theatre, albania, albanien, drawing
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Korca, Teatri Andon Z. Çajupi, theatre, albania, albanien
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Korca, Teatri Andon Z. Çajupi, theatre, albania, albanien
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Korca, Teatri Andon Z. Çajupi, theatre, albania, albanien
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Korca, Teatri Andon Z. Çajupi, theatre, albania, albanien
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Korca, Teatri Andon Z. Çajupi, theatre, albania, albanien
14 Foreground: BOLLES+WILSON's Korça paving format
Korca, Teatri Andon Z. Çajupi, theatre, albania, albanien
15 Theatre next to Red Bar's base and in its shadow