Dieze Training Centre
TYPOLOGY: Educational
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Castrop-Rauxel
YEAR: 1996
COMPETITION: 1994, First Prize
GFA: 3.000 sqm
CLIENT: GEWO, Castrop-Rauxel
PHOTOS: © Christian Richters
A branch of the Open University Hagen and a Women’s Retraining Centre – shared conference and seminar facilities. Anchor box plus geometric extensions. The alien conference element cantilevers acrobatically. Strict plan geometries evolve a three dimensional language of interlocking materials.
Shkodra Football Stadium
TYPOLOGY: Sport
COUNTRY: Albania
CITY: Shkodra
YEAR: 2017
PHOTOS: © Roman Mensing, BOLLES+WILSON
The 2017 football stadium in the northern Albanian city of Shkodra was a fast-track project – Albania had to host the ritual skirmish with Serbia. To marshal Riotous Serbian fans corral-like platforms were built – each restrains 500 fans within the heavy steel perimeter rail. These raked platforms were as naked concrete an illustration of Louis Kahn’s statement (that a buildings sculptural essence is only visible while under construction or as a ruin). The colours of the Shkodra team are a manly pink and light blue. Finished the pink reverse side of the stadium corrals offer a dramatic backdrop for informal urban life. The new main stadium with V.I.P. deck + press box is lit from up lights reflecting on white circles (see sketch). Existing stadiums were upgraded with a wind animated screen.
BRINK CENTER – 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)
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.
WLV Office Building
TYPOLOGY: Office
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Münster
YEAR: 1995
COMPETITION: 1992, First prize
GFA: 7.200 sqm
CLIENT: WLV
AWARDS: German Architecture Award 1996, commendation
PHOTOS: © Christian Richters
The reflective surface of the ‘dark green glazed’ brick animates a monolithic self-focusing form. An ambiguous surface alternating between the brilliance of the sky or the depths of black shadow. Mass is also the subject, a single building block in the urban fabric. A block further animated by the vectorial trajectory of the adjacent railway which instigates a façade curve and lean. A relatively simple slippage whose justification lies not in its formal but its tectonic resolution. Each brick course slips out one cm from the one supporting it. For the train traveller the WLV building is an event of a few seconds, its deflection perhaps only the effect of speed, its roof perhaps only temporarily hovering.
The three floors and 7.000 sqm of offices house a branch of local government that deals with the administration of psychiatric services. Shops on the ground and rooftop canteen-restaurant complete the sandwich. A specified planning module of 1.625 m results in a deep precast concrete fin on each axis, visible structure in unpainted concrete defining a window zone for heating, cable canals and glare blinds. From inside window frames disappear behind fins, to the south sun screens extend the internal ceiling line beyond the window. Systematised cellular offices are animated by contextual deflexions in the overall plan form, resulting in serpentine office strips, floating service islands, the ‘elastic plan’. Not high but low-tech is here and in the entire building thematizing, the simple, the well made, the long lasting.
