Blackburn House_London_Residential_Wohnhaus_Photo_Foto_Interior

Blackburn House

Detail

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.

Blackburn House_London_Residential_Wohnhaus_Photo_Foto_Interior
Blackburn House_London_Residential_Wohnhaus_Photo_Foto_Interior
Blackburn House_London_Residential_Wohnhaus_Photo_Foto_Interior
Blackburn House_London_Residential_Wohnhaus_Photo_Foto_Interior
Blackburn House_London_Residential_Wohnhaus_Photo_Foto_Interior
Blackburn House_London_Residential_Wohnhaus_Photo_Foto_Interior
Blackburn House_London_Residential_Wohnhaus_Photo_Foto_Interior
Blackburn House_London_Residential_Wohnhaus_Photo_Foto_Interior
Blackburn House_London_Residential_Wohnhaus_Photo_Foto_Interior
Blackburn House_London_Residential_Wohnhaus_Photo_Foto_Interior
Blackburn House_London_Residential_Wohnhaus_Photo_Foto_Interior
Eemcentrum Masterplan, Amersfoort, the Netherlands, sketch, drawing Peter Wilson

Eemcentrum Masterplan

Detail

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

Eemcentrum Masterplan, Amersfoort, the Netherlands, site plan, lageplan
Eemcentrum Masterplan, Amersfoort, the Netherlands, site plan, lageplan
Eemcentrum Masterplan, Amersfoort, the Netherlands
Eemcentrum Masterplan, Amersfoort, the Netherlands
Eemcentrum Masterplan, Amersfoort, the Netherlands
Eemcentrum Masterplan, Amersfoort, the Netherlands
Eemcentrum Masterplan, Amersfoort, the Netherlands, sketch, aquarelle, Peter Wilson, drawing
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_christian richters

Loddenheide Water Purification Plant

Detail

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.

loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_christian richters
Loddenheide Water Filtration Plant
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_christian richters
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_christian richters
H2O graphic on the fence mesh
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_model
Model
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_construction
Construction
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster
Design for the Dalai Lama Commemoration Stone
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster
The Dalai Lama Commemoration Stone
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster
Rainy day inauguration with Dalai Lama and the then mayoress
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_christian richters
After twenty years the line of poplar trees have grown to divide Pumphouse from Circular Airation Basin, a formal seperation envisiged in the original compositional concept.

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).
Icon museum korça, korca, Albania, roman mensing

Icon Museum

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Cultural
COUNTRY: Albania
CITY: Korça
YEAR: 2016
CLIENT: Municipality of Korçë
COLLABORATOR: Dea Studio
AWARDS: Nomination, The Plan Award 2017
Nomination, Aga Khan Award for Architecture
PHOTOS: © Roman Mensing

The building for the Korça Icon Museum was originally a structure of columns and floor slabs (Maison Domino) abandoned when communism collapsed in Albania.

The Albanian office DEA Studio were comissioned to design facades and BOLLES+WILSON were then asked by the municipality of Korça to design and develop an interior exhibition design and sequence for the 300 Orthodox icons.

The heavy walls on the exterior with their small windows were intended to give an appropriate medieval reading.

The small windows from the inside did give an appropriate mysterious atmosphere but in terms of viewing Icons they were too bright and needed some interior masking to avoid too much contrast between a small area of bright outside light and the surrounding.

As the museum neared completion the albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama visited, and thinking the facades were too prison-like asked BOLLES+WILSON to extend their interior language to the entrance facade. Black painted plaster was added framing and respecting the DEA window composition. BOLLES+WILSON also added ‚Barnett Newman colours‘ to the existing communist fountain.

EXHIBITION ORGANIZATION

The given three levels subdivide well into Basement Archive with ground level laboritories/administration. The Exhibition spaces belong on the entrance level and the 1st floor – here the interior concept proposes a specific circulation route for visitors and an absolute division between public spaces and ‘back-of- house’. This is necessary for reasons of security (the public must not have the possibility to enter rooms where Icons are being worked on).

The floor between entrance level and 1st floor has been removed over the entire left hand exhibition room. This allows a new stair facilitating a simple and spectacular visitors circulation route. The new stair gives panorama views of a 9.5 metre high golden wall – for this wall the Petersburg hanging system was chosen – a close packing of Icons, a tapestry of images covering the entire wall, impressing visitors with the size of the Korça collection.

A SEQUENCE OF ROOMS

The interior concept develops zones of strong individual character defined by colour: gold on the left, black matt and gloss black in the central ‘Black Labyrinth‘ zone and Red for the Iconastas (Altar screen) on the right. The Sequential Rooms are carefully choreographed for the most dramatic effect:

(a) Entrance Lobby – an abstract collage of shelves for merchandising, postcards, posters, local handcrafts and even small Icons painted by Korça artists (a new local industry) are displayed and sold.

(b) The Gold Room – a two floor high gold screen (one that also wraps the sidewalls and

tames natural light from slit windows). The screen is packed with Icons. Visitors promenade freely and then step up to the stair landing where an information handrail tells them what they are looking at.

(c) The White Balcony ­ – overlooking the Gold Room – has a heavy Black handrail and a white (conventional museum) rear wall for a row of small Icons. These lead to an opening on the right.

(d) The Black Labyrinth – the central zone of the museum is particularly dark and mysterious with individually lit Icons floating in the penumbra. Walls are painted in a collage of matt and gloss black and grey to enhance the collage effect. Side alcoves with lower ceilings and wooden floors bring individually hung Icons intimately close to viewers.

(e) The Red Salon – from the Black Labyrinth visitors emerge into a sensual space where all surfaces are red. The central zone is defined by a 10cm high platform on which stands the iconastas (Altar screen).

(f) The final exhibition room is white with an illuminated ceiling – an ethereal space. The room displays the two most valuable icons from the 14h century.

Icon museum korça, korca, Albania, roman mensing
Icon museum korça, korca, Albania, roman mensing
Icon museum korça, korca, Albania, roman mensing
Icon museum korça, korca, Albania, drawing, Peter Wilson
Icon museum korça, korca, Albania, roman mensing
Icon museum korça, korca, Albania, roman mensing
Icon museum korça, korca, Albania, roman mensing
Icon museum korça, korca, Albania, roman mensing
Icon museum korça, korca, Albania, drawing, Peter Wilson
Icon museum korça, korca, Albania, roman mensing
Icon museum korça, korca, Albania
Icon museum korça, korca, Albania
Icon museum korça, korca, Albania, roman mensing
Icon museum korça, korca, Albania