Kita Frankfurt Bergen Enkheim
TYPOLOGY: Educational
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Frankfurt
YEAR: 2022
CLIENT: City of Frankfurt
PHOTOS: © Roman Mensing
The latest BOLLES+WILSON kindergarten is now, after a protracted incubation open for its 60 mini-customers.
It is beside a fire station and behind suburban villas in Frankfurt’s Bergen Enkheim district.
The `coat of many colours´ façade is wood, sustainable, a signal for the building’s `passive house´ status. Colourful sun awnings animate the south façade where the six group rooms open to the playground or to the first floor balcony (where stairs connect down to playground). Sliding white sunscreens on the East and West façades also give night time security for open windows.
The flat roof is planted for rainwater retention and for insect habitat.
The compact volume and upper level multi purpose room are consequence of the limited site and a ground level change 2,20 m.
The interior circulation gallery is animated by an optimistic green/yellow wall with giant foot/hand prints.
A thematicising of scale is endemic to a building whose customers are only 90 centimeters tall.
BATTL3
LABORATORY 3 (FOR BATTERY RESEARCH) 2024–2027
TYPOLOGY: Research / Office
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Münster
YEAR: 2027
GFA: 2.694 sqm
CLIENT: Technologieförderung Münster GmbH
VISUALISATION: © engel & haehnel
The new addition to the BOLLES+WILSON 1993 Technology Centre, is a wedge filling the site between the existing connecting bridge and the southern street – now a boulevard of campus buildings. Laboratories, workshops + technical spaces occupy the extended two-floor arm. Six floors of offices occupy the tower.
Loddenheide Water Purification Plant
TYPOLOGY: Technical
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Munster
YEAR: 2021
PHOTOS: © Christian Richters, © BOLLES+WILSON
40 Years of Water Research – 20 years of Water Pumping
The 2001 Loddenheide Water Filtration Plant is almost BOLLES+WILSON’s smallest building. It has for the last 20 years been cleaning and filtering road runoff before it lands in the re-absorption pond of the Loddenheide Business Park. The pond itself is a re-naturalizing success, now a bird sanctuary for countless water foul. The glazed vitrine of the pump house now stands serenely in winter snow or spring blossom. Its machines turn two Archimedes Screw Pumps, aerating the water before splashing into a circular filtration tank. The rectangular plan geometry of the first is set against the circular form of the second. A line of poplar trees, now fully grown, bisects these two fundamental geometries. For those inexperienced at reading metaphoric content into infrastructural equipment the fences surrounding the two machines come with subtext – although the supergraphic H2O on the fence mesh is not readable when approached front on, only when seen in the oblique is it there to underline the theme of ‘Water’.
The Business Park was at the outset renamed Freedom Park by the Dalai Lama, then visiting Münster. The Dalai Lama Commemoration Stone stands 120 meters away from the pumping facilities – just follow the line of poplars. It is certainly BOLLES+WILSON’s smallest work. To read its text one must walk three times around the dark green stone. We like to believe that the rainy day inauguration photo documents the Dalai Lama gleefully asking Münsters lady Mayor – ‘Is it really a BOLLES+WILSON design’.
BOLLES+WILSON water research began in 1976 with Peter Wilson’s Iconic Water House. In 2018 the watery trajectory continued with the second warehouse for RS+Yellow both with ‘Infinity Pool’ roofs.
Moebelum
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.
Von-Galen-Grundschule
TYPOLOGY: Competition / School
COUNTRY: German
CITY: Gescher
YEAR: 2023
COMPETITION: Closed competition, 3rd Prize
COLLABORATOR: wbp Landschaftsarchitekten GmbH, Bochum
GFA: 4.117 sqm
CLIENT: Glockenstadt Gescher
The design carefully combines the historic building fabric with a modern extension. The existing façades are preserved and linked by a central, wedge-shaped structure that forms the heart of the school with its cafeteria, auditorium, and foyer.
All areas are fully accessible, with outdoor spaces clearly defined: a large playground to the north, a nature-oriented learning zone to the southwest, and a green entrance courtyard to the southeast. The foyer serves as a central meeting point and hub, connecting classrooms, multipurpose spaces, and flexible learning areas.
The new building respects the historic architecture while reinterpreting its language in a contemporary way—creating a school that is open, functional, and identity-shaping for students, staff, and the city of Gescher.
