RS+Yellow Distribution – Phase 1
TYPOLOGY: Warehouse, Villa
COUNTRY: German
CITY: Münster
YEAR: 1993
GFA: 5.810 sqm
CLIENT: Rainer Scholze
PHOTOS: © Christian Richters, © Gabriele Bracht,
© El Croquis, © BOLLES+WILSON
The 1990-93 shiny aluminum shed was the first of three big-box warehouse buildings built successively side by side to store and distribute furniture for the ever-expanding chain of RS + Yellow Shops. As well as this home base BOLLES+WILSON built for the same company shops/outlets in Münster, Hannover, Munich and Berlin.
The dimensions and form of the 1993 RS+Yellow Distribution – Phase 1 were prescribed by the ruins of a half-built industrial structure. The problem was to economically clad this given form.
The skin of corrugated aluminum has been seen as a reference to Australian wool sheds, a typology here projected to a length of 120 m. It landed like a UFO in its fragmented peripheral context. At the time B+W were propagating such large self-evident forms (see Technologyhof Münster 1993) to anchor and give scale to the fragmentation of ubiquitous post-industrial Eurolandschaft Fields.
The critical detail for RS+Yellow Distribution – Phase 1 was the façade section, two intersecting plates of shiny metal. Avoiding a capping plate as well as regular downpipes, that would compromise such a pure extended surface, runoff water from the barrel-vaulted roof courses down the inside surface of the upper façade panel to be delivered in turn by the lower façade panel into a pebble drain at ground level.
The rear end of this super-shed housed the office of the company owner, this subsequently moved to the spectacular Waterscape rooftop of RS+Yellow Distribution – Phase 2 built directly beside RS+Yellow Distribution – Phase 1. A third adjacent big-box was to be capped by the client’s rooftop villa (RS+Yellow Distribution – Phase 3) but his tragic death meant that it was completed as meeting rooms, standing in another infinity pool.
Housing at St. Sebastian
TYPOLOGY: Residential
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Münster
YEAR: 2016
COMPETITION: 2009, 1st prize
GFA: 8.180 sqm
CLIENT: Wohn + Stadtbau GmbH
AWARDS: “Exemplary publicly funded residential projects” – North Rhine-Westphalia Regional Prize for Architecture,
Housing and Urban Development 2017
BDA Münster-Münsterland award for best buildings 2017,
honorable mention
PHOTOS: © Roman Mensing, BOLLES+WILSON
In 2009 BOLLES+WILSON won the 1st prize for housing and a kindergarten on the site of the 1960ies St Sebastian Church. It was expected that the emblematic oval form of the church be demolished. Instead the kindergarten colonized the nave. It was opened in 2013 – a much published reuse with interior green weather protected play decks.
2015 phase 2 was complete, a peripheral frame of housing protecting the kindergarten from a noisy street and giving a precise edge to the adjacent park.
Market realities are clearly visible in the differentiation of the social (subsidized) housing with its bright white and pink plaster facade to Hammer Str. and the owner-occupied flats with their noble dark brick facade facing the mature trees in the park.
One corner tree is explicitly embraced by the projecting white sheet of the street facade.
Only kitchen and bathroom windows are allowed to receive traffic noise; living rooms and balconies turn inwards to the quiet green space surrounding the kindergarten.
Unexpected colour animates the lift and stair tower and the setback roof apartments. This polychrome trope also animates the skyline of the park elevation. Here big white frames give a grand order, a vertical hierarchy. But ultimately it is the grandeur of the existing trees that claim the status of leading actors in the spatial choreography.
Victoria Park – Four Housing Blocks
TYPOLOGY: Masterplan + Residential
COUNTRY: Australia
CITY: Sydney
YEAR: 2001
CLIENT: Waltcorp. Ltd
PHOTOS: © Turner
The visitor’s image of Australia is of huge skies, bleaching light and wide horizons. The planning model for this new Sydney quarter involved dense urban blocks with six to nine story street fronts and towers with views to their downtown big brothers. Surprisingly photos of the first two of the four blocks satisfy both expectations. One thinks of Brasilia or the suburbs of Milan in the 1950s. This ex-industrial site has in its transitional state the appearance of landscape becoming city in one heroic eruption.
Sydney is growing rapidly, due in part to an exodus from country towns, to immigration and to a cunning ‘down-under’ financial regulation that only allows foreign investors to buy into new buildings. To meet this quantitative demand a radical systematising of the building process into a ‘house of cards’ stacking of prefabricated concrete panels and standard repetitive apartment layouts has emerged. This basic logic of the ESP Block and of the ‘FORM’ Block is subsequently enhanced by balcony variations. These are essential for climatic reasons, shade and outdoor living space. (As a substitute for the suburban back yard balconies in Australia are often equipped with gas outlets for high-rise barbecuing.) Compositional juxtapositions and articulations of balconies hung outside the repetitive and regular apartment grid also reverses the modernist dictum of outside expressing interior functions. Here the heterogeneous surface instigates variations in apartment types.
2001 Four Block Masterplan
2004 ESP Block completed,
2005 Block 301 (“FORM”) completed,
2005 Blocks 303 and 305 in planning.
Change Factory
TYPOLOGY: Competition / Office
COUNTRY: German
CITY: Eschweiler
YEAR: 2023
COMPETITION: Closed competition, 2nd Prize
COLLABORATOR: wbp Landschaftsarchitekten GmbH, Bochum
GFA: 11.880 sqm
CLIENT: Stadt Eschweiler
The Change Factory is Eschweiler’s new green, flexible, and flood-resilient innovation hub.
Instead of one large block, it’s a cluster of pavilions, halls, and workspaces connected by a leafy promenade linking the city centre to Drieschplatz. Reclaimed bricks, repurposed windows, and lush façades show a commitment to circular construction, while active roofs host orchards, gardens, sports areas, and solar panels. A contoured green ring and rain-retention meadows provide natural flood protection, turning resilience into a design feature. Inside, adaptable modular buildings offer space for events, co-working, research, and community life. Combining low-tech solutions with smart energy systems, the Change Factory sets a new standard for sustainable urban development.
Leo’s Gate Coworking und Coliving
TYPOLOGY: Office / Residential
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Münster
YEAR: 2020
GFA: 8.140 sqm
CLIENT: Leos Gate GmbH & Co. KG – New work and -living
STATUS: In progress
Leo’s Gate is the fourth building block on the site of the former ice rink in Münster. It marks the entrance to the Science Quarter from Steinfurter Strasse. The mixed use with catering units on the ground floor, flexible Coworking Spaces and Coliving Modules on the upper floors is multifunctional.
Different wooden constructions are planned depending on use and requirements. Floor-to-ceiling timber trusses with light ribbed ceiling slabs are used in the cantilevered Coworking areas. The 45 residential units are delivered as completely prefabricated and furnished wooden modules and are stacked over four floors.
All facade elements are designed in a uniform shade of red, which blends in with the entire ensemble of the historical Leonardo campus and the new brick buildings in the area.
