City Hall Korça
TYPOLOGY: Public
COUNTRY: Albania
CITY: Korça
YEAR: 2019
PHOTOS: © Roman Mensing, Olgert Maxhe, BOLLES+WILSON
1) The conversion of the communist library on Bulevard Shën Gjergji was a parallel project to the construction of the (BOLLES+WILSON) New Library facing the new Cathedral Square. – These are all pieces of the puzzle that adds up to the BOLLES+WILSON Masterplan for the centre of the city of Korça.
2) The re-design introduced a new balcony to synthesise a previously uncomfortable Junction of marble columns and the white box upper floor. The perforated balustrade facilitates victorious football teams or the mayor addressing his public.
3) The four large windows to the balcony received new sliding sun screens. We are here only a stone’s throw from the BOLLES+WILSON 2014 Red Bar in the Sky.
4) The communist library was on the site of a demolished church – the façade geometry of this absent building had already been embossed into the paving (rotated on its ground line) with the pedestrianizing of Boulevard Shën Gjergji (BOLLES+WILSON Masterplan stage 1). This embedded history is now to be read in lasered text in Albanian (black on white) or English (white on black) on the new entrance ramp wall (the axis of rotation for the reanimated church geometry).
5) The old library interior is emptied for a spacious ‘one stop shop’ (public information). Here existing tiles and the wide span coffered ceilings are thematized (colour + integrated air outlets), the existing theatrical stairs gets a pink backdrop with scattered windows. (6+7)
6) Here existing tiles and the wide span coffered ceilings are thematized (colour + integrated air outlets).
7) The existing theatrical stairs gets a pink backdrop with scattered windows.
8) Part of the entrance level floor was removed for a stair that leads down to the new council chamber.
9) White public information islands are divided from individual offices by a lightweight glass wall.
10) Dividing – the council chamber from the Lobby. A translucent screen of green wine bottles was inserted between existing structural beams.
11) The floor slab removed for the council chamber creates a grand salon for political debate. Councillors desks are white, the visitors balcony pink (12+13)
14) Wine bottles set in mortar give an underwater ambience to council chamber.
15) Their open necks function as acoustic absorbers.
16) Councillors’ benches focus on the mayor’s desk, this is backed by a wooden screen with the double eagle Albanian national symbol.
17) Our client, the mayor Sotiraq Filo
18) A high clearstory window lights from the side
19) Next door to the new city hall an existing building (nineteenth century eclecticism) has been carefully restored for the offices of the mayor and his staff. It connects directly to the council chamber via a submerged tunnel (steps above). (19)
20) Within the mayors building – no architectural interventions were needed. It only remained for BOLLES+WILSON to apply a radical polychromy. (20,21,22,23)
KALDEWEI COMPETENCE CENTER
TYPOLOGY: Retail
COUNTRY: German
CITY: Ahlen
YEAR: 2005
COMPETITION: Invited, 1ˢᵗ Prize
GFA: 1.460 sqm
CLIENT: Franz Kaldewei GmbH & Co. KG
PHOTOS: © Christian Richters, © 2024 Walter Knoll
TALE OF THE TUB
Kaldewei are the Mercedes of bath manufacturers. Their robust 3.5mm tubs are formed over an iron mold by robotic arms (the steel screams while being pressed into shape). Tubs are then enameled, the historic but still functioning enamel kiln is glimpsed as the conclusion of the visitor’s trajectory through the new information and exhibition center. Façade planks (wrapping both new visitor facilities, adjacent smelting plant and warehouse) are enameled in the colours used for bathtubs. Entrance is across the paved plan of the original Kaldewei family villa, nearby are terracotta vats used in the nineteenth century for transporting vitreous enamel crystals.
KKC Plan at Ground level - PROMENADE ARCHITECTURAL
The façade Screens - plunging into a tub or choosing a whirlpool bath are discrete activities. The lobby is clad in a cosy mosaic of wooden panels with integrated lights and air outlets. The promenade architectural sequence leads up past a Bizatza tiled shower niche. Below - the wardrobe lurks behind the purple memory of the absent Kaldewei family house.
KKC Plan at upper level -EXHIBITION SALON
Like Carl Andre artworks, bathtub and shower tray designs are clustered in groups of four - spot-lit minimalist sculptures. On the grey salon end-wall are coloured wax circles by artist Gro Luhn. Beyond the salon visitors look down to the firey drama of the enamel kiln.
KKC Plan at lower level – PLUNGE CELLS
Purchasing a luxury whirlpool bath is similar to buying a small car, one demands a test drive or in this case a test bath. Toweling robes are donned in changing pods before progressing to sensuous cells, each with its own gestalt and bath model. Busloads of potential customers arrive from all over Europe engendering interesting sociological observations - Germans each require new bath water while Belgians are happy to sit in the water of the previous bather. Back in the lobby a gallery exhibition of historic bath artifacts was sketched but not realized.
Dom Quartier
TYPOLOGY: Office
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Magdeburg
YEAR: 2002
COMPETITION: Invited Competition 1997, First Prize
GFA: 48.000 sqm
CLIENT: Nord/LB
PHOTOS: © Roland Halbe, Klemens Ortmeyer, Christian Richters, Edmund Summer
The extensive Square of Germany’s oldest Gothic Cathedral is framed to the east and north by Neo-Baroque (post-war reconstructed) Parliament and Chancellery for the state of Sachsen-Anhalt. The enclosure of the square is completed with these two new blocks housing a bank (Nord LB), Chamber of Commerce, offices, shops and restaurants.
The wider urban context is noble but battered and heterogeneous in the extreme. Only occasional fragments of the medieval or 19th century Prussian Administration city remain, marooned between socialist system built housing slabs. With German Reunification and the subsequent building boom Magdeburg like most east German cities was the recipient of a number of inner city shopping blocks and speculative offices competing in the free market rush with an explosion of out-of-town shopping and office boxes. In the subsequent economically depressed atmosphere the two new ‘Domplatz’ blocks represent foundation stones for a considered qualitative and long term investment in the culture of the city.
Two blocks are divided into three (three users) by the introduction of the ‘Bankgasse’ which bisects and animates the larger block, extends a Domplatz tree Allee and focuses on the neighbouring St. Sebastian. A compositional strategy of scenographic sequences (external and internal), and significant details (serpentine corners), rigorous geometries and poetic moments.
Volumetric stringency (a rigorous facade height of 20 metres and paired windows), are ameliorated by the patchwork texture and colour variations of the blue/grey stone facade (Brazilian Azul Macaubas). A haptic richness not unlike the irregular weathering of the 800 year old cathedral stones. Glazed and canopied Roof Pavilions set up above the rigorous parapet line a sequence of cross city vector relationships.
Systematized Office Interiors are interrupted by a larger sequence of movement spaces with light walls and material elaboration (Banking Hall, Atrium, Entrance Lobbies, Rooftop Restaurant).
Ligor Rembeci
TYPOLOGY: Residential
COUNTRY: Albania
CITY: Korça
YEAR: 2021
CLIENT: Bregu Group
PHOTOS: © Roman Mensing
The original BOLLES+WILSON 2016 Masterplan for the center of Korça identified the Ligor Rembeci Quarter as a zone for careful insertion of new buildings in symbiosis with existing stone villas – this strategy – activating a block interior accessed by a network of passages – is now emerging with the recently completed Serenity Villas.
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.
