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

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 ORGANISATION

The given three levels subdivide well into Basement Archive with ground level laboratories/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.

Entering the city from the north, a straight road, at the apex of its perspectival triangle a silhouette of cathedral and other church towers. Progressing into this picture, slightly downhill the view is gradually obscured, the outer traffic ring crossed.

The next 500 m rise, not a dramatic topography but enough to awaken expectation – ‘up there I will be in the city’. Buildings on the right enclose and to some extent counteract the latent drama of this ascent, this arrival. The left is undergoing a transformation, a re-configuring, a chance for a modulated roofline to enhance topographic character.

This is the intention of the sculpted silhouette of the new offices of the ‘Wohn+Stadtbau’ Housing Association. Its crest location is critical. The structured plaster façades of both volumes do not just echo but enhance site topography and the drama of entrance.

Entering the building involves a counter and smaller scale spatial sequence. The building front steps back from the heavily trafficked street to a transparent foyer. The ground floor facilitates intensive visitor traffic, waiting spaces extend into the internal court and playground.

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.