Spuimarkt

Detail

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.

Spuimarkt, The Netherlands, The Hague, floor plan, grundriss

Spuimarkt, The Netherlands, The Hague, sketch, drawing

CITADEL + THRINON HENGELO NL. 2005

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Residential
COUNTRY: The Netherlands
CITY: Hengelo
YEAR: 2005
GFA: 25.000 m²
PARTNER: Bureau Boukunde, Rotterdam
PHOTOS: © BOLLES+WILSON

While paying our last respects to the soon to be demolished V&D department store in Hengelo we revisited our 2005 housing ensemble around the corner.

CITADEL + THRINON
(formally known as THIEMSLAND)
BOLLES+WILSON 1998–2005

The black + white volumes of the (now) Thrinon block soften into ‘De Stijl’ pixels as they turn the corner to the Citadel Park (block H)

Robust street facing black + white morphs into a soft green as the residential facades march into the Citadel Park (blocks I + G)

BOLLES+WILSON housing frames both sides of a pedestrian + bicycle boulevard on axis with the Neo-Renaissance City Hall (block G)

(block G)

Generous balconies in the three Citadel buildings overlook the expansive park.
Balcony planting signals happy occupants (blocks J + I)

(blocks I + G)

How to bring the not insubstantial Citadel block to an end? – with reeds and water (block J)

Plan elevation (block J)

Windows on the Citadel inner facade are either bedroom or bathroom scale (block J)

Saw-tooth balcony access on the inner facade of the Thrinon building (block H)

Apartment layout (block H)

Like all BOLLES+WILSON projects, the (then called) Thiemsland choreography
began with a hand sketch

NEW HIT – Hotel International Tirana

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Hotel

COUNTRY: Albania

CITY: Tirana

YEAR: 2016-2025

ARCHITECTS: BOLLES+WILSON with Atelier 4

PHOTOS: © BOLLES+WILSON

New HIT was the working title of this project for the Albanian investor Mr. Ram Geci – it has now been franchised to the INTERCONTINENTAL hotel chain.

THINNESS – The gold New HIT façade terminates Tirana’s central axis, the result of a 1930s regulatory plan by Geheraldo Bossio and Fernando Poggi (Italian occupation).

THINNESS – The hotel is adjacent to the grand and elegant 2017 Scanderbeg Square by the Belgians 51N4E.

THINNESS – in the east and west elevations the hotel is read as two thin slabs - black to the north and gold to the south.

LAYERING – the black slab backs the gold façade, in front of this stands the white Hotel Tirana (the tallest building in Albania under Communism). To the left is the Albanian National Museum (a gift from Russia). To the right even MDRDV’s Skanderbeg (national hero) glances sideways wishing he also could be golden.

EVOLUTION - First sketches engendering the 2 slab sandwich concept.

EVOLUTION - Inverted `V´ windows originally occupied the south façade.

EVOLUTION - These at night became a woven golden curtain.

EVOLUTION - Inverted `V´ windows with projecting cowl (sun screening)

EVOLUTION - Illuminated gold curtain - with double windows.

EVOLUTION - Windows taking in two hotel rooms are marshalled into rectangular cassettes.

EVOLUTION - WINDOW DECLINATION - Like Lucretian Clinamen the windows are in flux, swerving out of alignment with the gold façade which each illuminates with its concealed LED strip (left hand window surround).

EVOLUTION - Window details - the central coloured panels screen ventilation slits to two hotel rooms.

EVOLUTION - Ordered windows -Tirana jumble - grand mountains.

LOST IN TRANSLATION - An eight year evolution from initial concept to grand physical object is an act of translation. It is thus inevitable that certain generative ideas are lost in translation.

LOST IN TRANSLATION - The Hotel Lobby Sketch was instrumental in getting the Prime Minister’s approval, it survived much of the journey but not the appearance of an Italian interior designer who arrived when the 5 Star hotel was franchised to the INTERCONTINENTAL chain.

LOST IN TRANSLATION - This was also the fate of the BOLLES+WILSON conference hall, also the initial room gestalt.

Another Lost in Translation victim was rooftop terraces - too windy 100m up.

LOST IN TRANSLATION - The late arrival of a Casino almost engendered a gold and red staircase balanced over car park ramps.

LOST IN TRANSLATION - As Louis Kahn once noted – the drama of a building’s making is lost when complete. For the New HIT tower construction (as always) first went dramatically downwards.

When finished a tower becomes a family member in an emerging URBAN COLLAGE. From left to right – BOLLES +WILSON, MDRDV, CEBRA, Alejandro Aravena (Elemental), BOLLES+WILSON’s under construction Bazaar Gate (in the backseat).

VASARELY TOWER

Detail

RRUGA ALI PASHA GUCIA

TIRANA

FOR CHRISTIN INVESTMENTS 2025

CONCEPT
The theme of the Vasarely Tower design is derived from the hungarian pop artist Victor Vasarely who used simple geometric shapes and strong contrasting colours. The Vasarely Museum in Aixen-Provence interprets Vasarelys paintings as a building. For our proposal the horizontal museum becomes a vertical tower.

Reference Vasarely Museum in Aix-en-Provence

The tower is based on a 12,5 m by 12,5 m plan with circular loggia, bringing daylight deep into the appartments.
Within the loggia all surfaces and windowframes are coloured pink RAL 3014 (Vasarely colour contrast).

city hall, korca new municipality, albania

City Hall Korça

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Public

COUNTRY: Albania

CITY: Korça

YEAR: 2019

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)