Korça City Centre Masterplan
TYPOLOGY: Masterplan
COUNTRY: Albania
CITY: Korça
YEAR: 2009
COMPETITION: 1rst Prize
CLIENT: Municipality of Korça
PHOTOS: © Roman Mensing, © BOLLES+WILSON
On Thursday 16 July 2009 the mayor and international jury pronounced BOLLES+WILSON winner of the competition for the new Korça City Centre Masterplan. The international two-stage competition was decided in favour of the Muenster based office for its concept of “Scenographic Urbanism”, a choreographing of new buildings and public spaces which pays close attention to the existing grains and potentials of this small but spatially complex city.
Surrounded by dramatic mountains and a wide arcadian valley Korça focuses a region of 360,000 inhabitants. Its urbane morphology reflects the wealth and ambitions of returning emigrants as well as historically strong trade relations with central Europe. Many Novecento and Art Nouveau villas are now restored, many are still crumbling. The aim of the competition was to find a clear concept, which integrates a traffic and pedestrian rational with the qualitative and development needs of the city – a commercial strategy, administrative facilities and residential development. The competition brief also emphasised that the scale of the new Korça should be respectful and appropriate to the historic scale.
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BOLLES+WILSON identified five zones for the revitalisation of the 197,000 sqm city centre. Each zone possessing its own unique character, together they add up to a network of urbane public spaces. At one end of the centre the Cathedral of ‘Christus Resurrection’ anchors, at the other end a Commercial Anchor is added. These are connected by the Boulevard Shen Gjergji – now transformed into a ‘Cultural Promenade’. Reduction in expansive communist road widths allows an extension of the Cathedral Square. This square is planned three steps above the street and framed by café pergolas, an optical filter between traffic and event space. A large stage left of the cathedral and a smaller stage to the right facilitate a wide variety of events. Curved paving stripes echo the Cathedral geometry and serve to discipline market stands.
New figure on the Korça skyline and counterpoint to the Cathedral, a “Vertical Mall” occupies and marshals the parade-ground scaled Theatre Square. A new commercial strip extends from here to the Bazaar via new shopping/housing blocks and a new Bus Station Roof – a Farmers-market platform.
This – the second of the five zones – creates a new commercial hub in downtown Korça.
The third zone is rescripted as a ‘Cultural promenade’, a semi-pedestrian connection between Cathedral and downtown Mall. Here a number of significant buildings such as the ‘Education Museum’ are extended out into the tree-lined, shady and café-filled Promenade as a carpet-like patterned paving, a choreographed sequence of ‘Patterned Squares – Urban Living Rooms’.
The fourth zone revitalises a villa zone with carefully placed new development. In order not to overwhelm the delicate historic scale of Korça a ‘Patchwork Strategy’ is invented – new buildings are paired with restored existing villas to form ‘Development Islands’ (shared economic benefit) and thereby create a network of active block-internal passages.
The final zone of the Masterplan is the ‘Enlarged Park’ (‘green heart’). Here a new triangular-block frames the park edge and by the sale of public land for private development finances the upgrading of the park itself.
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Related project:
Red Bar in the Sky, Theatre Square, Korça, 2014
TALLINN MARINA 2026
TYPOLOGY: Masterplan
COUNTRY: Estonia
CITY: Tallinn
YEAR: 2026
COMPETITION: A public, single-stage
architectural design competition for an urban configuration and its open spaces
GFA: 44.896 sqm
CLIENT: Tallinna Olümpiapurjespordikeskus AS
TALLINN – TOPI 11 + 13
- Ex-Olympic Sailing Marina (1970) with Soviet megastructure hotel
- The international competition brief called for a new mega structure, another single building with housing, sport, hotel + retail close-packed within
- With our neighbour, a constellation of bits (connected underground). The Leitmotiv is that of village. The judges commented that we had misunderstood the brief – intentionally so, as we believe, glass-clad big boxes to be un-sustainable
housing (orange) and public facilities (red):
- wellness pools
- curling + gym
- hotel
- community hall with kindergarten (orange rendering)
Innovative Administration of Potsdam-Mittelmark
TYPOLOGY: Competition / Office
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Potsdam
YEAR: 2022
COMPETITION: Closed two-phase competition, 1st Prize
GFA: 23.000 sqm
CLIENT: District of Potsdam-Mittelmark
COLLABORATORS: Lindschulte+GGL Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH, Gerhardt Landschaft, Nees Ingenieure GmbH
The structural design for the administration building on the site of the historic Beelitz sanatorium was based on the winning design by B+W for the previous urban planning competition.
By following the course of the original footpaths, the new building blends gently into the park landscape. The restored circular hiking trail in the historic park serves as a “natural” construction limit and forms the connection to the listed building.
The south side of the new building develops parallel to the street and mediates between the alignments of the different existing buildings and the traffic routes.
Public and semi-public functions such as the entrance hall, conference centre, advice centre and canteen are lined up in the base. The three upper floors form the main building that is visible from afar and house the office and administration area. Towards the park, like the base, it leans against the circle of the historic circular path, while towards the street sides the volume is structured into individual sections by a wave shape.
BRINK CENTRE – HENGELO
TYPOLOGY: Masterplan
COUNTRY: The Netherlands
CITY: Hengelo
YEAR: 1998
COMPETITION: 1995
CLIENT: ING VASTGOED
PARTNER: Bureau Boukunde, Rotterdam
PHOTOS: © Christian Richters, BOLLES+WILSON
BOLLES+WILSON won the competition with a choreographed ensemble of heterogeneous objects:
- A shopping passage with housing above
- A department store (Vroom & Dreesmann)
- A Klok Tower – which anchors both the BRINK ensemble and the Hengelo market square
digital klok – market day
THE SHORT LIFE OF A DIGITAL KLOK:
The BRINK campanile (Klok) forms a triangle with city hall + church towers. After 10 years the Klok came down with digital Alzheimer's. BOLLES+WILSON were asked for an avatar. The gold angel (local artist) blowing a raspberry in the direction of Enschede survived.
The market square has now undergone green washing, also the klok tower – we hope!!
(on the right – the condemned V&D)
Falkenried
TYPOLOGY: Masterplan, Residential, Office
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Hamburg-Eppendorf
YEAR: 2004
COMPETITION: Masterplan Competition 1999, First Prize
GFA: 34.500 sqm
CLIENT: Bayerische Hausbau GmbH, Munich
AWARDS: German Urban Planning Award 2004
PHOTOS: © Christian Richters
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’.
