Spuimarkt
TYPOLOGY: Shopping // Retail, Leisure, Cultural
COUNTRY: The Netherlands
CITY: The Hague
YEAR: 2008
Masterplan 1997
Design Commercial Block 2005-2007
GFA: 36.400 sqm
CLIENT: ING Vastgoed, The Hague; Pathé Theatres B.V.
COLLABORATOR: Bureau Bouwkunde (facilitating architect)
AWARDS: Shopping Centre of the Year NL 2009
PHOTOS: © Christian Richters
The Spuimarkt is a permeable block, it hosts the life of the city (tides and eddies of shoppers), it leads Bioscoop and other leisure seekers dramatically upward, and perches them in grand foyers, outlook windows, privileged vantages. The Pathé cinema foyer is a Piranesian space, its stairs flow dramatically upward, they cross, they hover. Just arriving at one of the nine cinemas (2,270 seats) is a cinematic experience – along the way some of the best views in Den Haag.
A richly textured brick facade gives unity and dignity to the whole block; the tactility of the rotated and projecting bricks is comparable to a tweed jacket, its hand-made quality both abstract and traditional. Spuimarkt’s sculptured corporal autonomy is carefully dovetailed into the wider context, mediating between the Bijenkorf and the City Hall to form a trilogy of major urban statements. The building’s varying scales respond to the surrounding context, the grand Grote Marktstraat facade steps down behind to the more intimate street scale of Gedempte Gracht. The lower Pathé cinema entrance reflects the height of the traditional houses it faces.
The sinuous roof silhouette, moulded around the cinema within, is like a topographic landform; an anchoring that gives measure and scale to the complex Den Haag skyline.
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.
Mittelhafen
TYPOLOGY: Competition / Office
COUNTRY: German
CITY: Münster
YEAR: 2020
COMPETITION: Closed competition, 2nd Prize
GFA: 12.740 sqm
CLIENT: Ärzteversorgung Westfalen-Lippe
Both the property side facing the city port and the street side to “Am Mittelhafen” require representative façades. Therefor a building in the north-south axis is required, which fills the property over the entire length. The two narrow views speak a suitably dignified language – to the waterfront through an invigorating silhouette that adds a building with personality to the row of existing office buildings. The opposite side facing the street is emphasized by an expressive façade – in contrast to the buildings in the immediate vicinity, which do not have such a concise addresses. This gives the quarter a much needed “urban flair”.
BnL Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg
TYPOLOGY: Cultural
COUNTRY: Luxemburg
CITY: Luxembourg (Kirchberg)
YEAR: 2019
COMPETITION: 2003, 1st prize
GFA: 38.200 sqm
CLIENT: Le Gouvernement du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg / Ministère de la Mobilité et des Travaux publics
COLLABORATOR: cooperation with local office: WW+ architektur + management sàrl (tender + construction management)
AWARD: 2021 DAM Prize for Architecture in Germany, category Buildings Abroad (Shortlist)
PHOTOS: © Christian Richters
PHOTOS MODEL: © Tomasz Samek
PHOTOS CONSTRUCTION: © Administration des bâtiments publics / Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg + BOLLES+WILSON
The task of the Patrimonial and Universal Library is the housing and protection of Cultural and Intellectual Texts – a foundation stone of the intellectual community. For the BnL a compact, energy efficient building volume houses a wide range of functional entities.
A transparent imposing, but at the same time inviting, facade fronts onto the Avenue John F. Kennedy. Internal functions unfold sequentially from this entrance gesture; Foyer +, Café (with upper level conference + seminar rooms), next the Reading Room – a landscape of terraced workstations and bookshelves. The principle building block is located deep within the building, a central and compact archive over five levels. This secure core is encased by public spaces and forms a plateau on top of which the largest bookshelf area and reading-deck is found.
The principle facade material is large format red pre-cast concrete panels – a patchwork due to a variety of surface treatments (water/sand-jeting, acid washing). The architectural intention is homogeneity, a material unity of the overall building volume, with an undercurrent of surface articulation. The archive plateau is encased in a bastion-like wrapping of stone-filled Gabion cages. Planning prioritized energy efficiency; technical installations take second place in favour of an activating of the buildings thermal mass to engender a sustainable interior climate.
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’.
