Cinnamon Tower
TYPOLOGY: Residential
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Hamburg
YEAR: 2015
COMPETITION: 2006, 1st prize
GFA: 4.250 sqm
CLIENT: Gross & Partner
AWARDS: Deutscher Architektur Preis 2017 (commendation) for Harbour Masters Building Ensemble, BDA Hamburg Architecture Award 2016 (1st prize), German Facade Award for rear-ventilated facades 2015 (commendation)
NOMINATIONS: Mies van der Rohe Award 2017, Polis Award 2017 for Harbour Masters Building Ensemble
PHOTOS: © Christian Richters (tower) | Rainer Mader (pavilion)
The Cinnamon tower was conceived as freestanding campanile – a pin on a piazza was the concept behind the premiated competition design by BOLLES+WILSON for the existing 19th century Harbour Masters Building.
A tower was not anticipated in the competition programme, but the jury agreed that a tower anchors the public functions around the only remaining historical building to survive between the megablocks of the ‘Overseas Quarter’ master plan. The historic building will also be more autonomous.
Slenderness is essential for a campanile. Over the course of its 8-year gestation this was respected – even while its function mutated from stacked restaurants to housing. The 13 x 16 m floor plan tapers towards the top. With a height of 56 meters the tower is 4-times higher than it is wide.
How can such a thin chap be efficient?
The efficient answer is duplex apartments. Originally the concept foresaw seven apartments, each on 2 floors, a panoramic living deck on the upper level and bedrooms with punched windows below. Precise market analysis led to a variation of this formula: one triplex apartment at the top and some 1-floor apartments at lower levels. Built were ten apartments, four with 130 sqm, five with 185 sqm and one with 300 sqm. The tower has a gross floor area of 4.300 sqm and a volume of 16.000 cubic metres. At the ground level, the piazza level is a commercial area of around 300 sqm.
Strict high-rise regulations demanded an escape route from every floor via secured escape stair. The possibility to clean every window from the inside was also a criterion to be met. The spectacular view of the New Elbphilharmonie should not be blurred by dirty windows. Room-high windows on three sides of the living room also allow the tracking of incoming cruise ships.
Facade panels of anodized aluminium sheets in different gradations of dark red correspond to the patchwork of BOLLES+WILSON’s pavilion from 2008. This was the first realized component of the Harbour Masters ensemble. In sunlight these aluminium panels take on colourful nuances while on cloudy days they assume a darker, more serious Paul-Klee like appearance. This is a building that changes its character according to the incidence of light, a new figure on Hamburg’s skyline.
St. Sebastian
TYPOLOGY: Educational
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY Münster
YEAR: 2013
COMPETITION: 2009, 1st Prize
PHOTOS: © Markus Hauschild, Christian Richters
HISTORICAL PHOTO: © S. Ahlbrand-Dornseif, R.Wakonigg
A church becomes a kindergarten.
Not heritage listed, already condemned, the St. Sebastian church built in 1962 and deconsecrated in 2008 has been revitalized with the most lively and positive function, i.e. with children.
The elegant elliptical form of the nave physically anchors its surrounding neighborhood. Two levels of kindergarten group rooms are housed within, the roofs of these become an all-weather play deck. Grass green impact-protection flooring and street lights give the play decks the ambience of an outdoor space.
A grid of 50 x 50 cm unglazed openings, the only originally glazed light source in the church, provide constant, natural ventilation. Cold in winter, comfortably temperate in summer, but always dry, this magical inside/outside space is flooded with light.
Adjacent to the kindergarten nave, a new street facing extension houses the main entrance, kitchen, offices, technical rooms and one multipurpose room. This is available for neighborhood events.
Blackburn House
TYPOLOGY: Residential
COUNTRY: UK
CITY: London
YEAR: 1987
PHOTOS: © BOLLES+WILSON
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.
Luxor Theatre
TYPOLOGY: Cultural
COUNTRY: Netherlands
CITY: Rotterdam, Kop van Zuid
YEAR: 2001
COMPETITION: Competition 1996, 1st Prize
GFA: 24.000 sqm
CLIENT: City of Rotterdam
COLLABORATOR: Bureau Bouwkunde (local support office)
AWARD: Mies van der Rohe Award 2001 (Shortlist)
PHOTOS: © Christian Richters, © L5, © BOLLES+WILSON
The New Luxor Theatre faces both the Maas River and Rijn Harbour – A multiple orientation, a single wrapping facade, a 360° building. An internalised ramp allows three 18 m long trucks to park directly besides the first floor stage. The ramp roof provides an architectural promenade in the foyer. The Luxor auditorium seats 1500, a giant scaled musical instrument, a surprisingly ‘intimate room’. The Luxor facilitates with an appropriated spatial theatricality the well working of complex theatre logistics.
On the 11th of May 2011 BOLLES+WILSON’S Luxor Theatre in Rotterdam celebrated its tenth anniversary with a spectacular Gala show.
The evening also marked the retirement of Luxor director Rob Wiegman – the great Rob Wiegman without whom this building, this resounding and on-going cultural event would not have happened. Tributes abounded, speeches – emotional Actors, Performers, Politicians, Rotterdamers – Architects.
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.
