RS+Yellow Furniture

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Retail

COUNTRY: Germany

CITY: Münster

YEAR: 2003

GFA: 7.700 sqm

CLIENT: Rainer Scholze

AWARDS: Award for Exemplary Corporate Architecture in NRW 2004

PHOTOS: © Christian Richters

‘A staging of shopping’. The widespan shop outlet typology usually situated on the periphery is here reconstituted as an urban facade, city near and addressing the city bound / city exiting traffic. Three stores (RS, Yellow, Brands) with an overall shop area of 5.000 m2 cluster with warehouse and delivery bays, around an internal parking piazza. An advertising tower erupts on one corner, a supersign, a new actor in the quartier’s tower landscape (Trinity Church and Fire Station Tower).

A theatrically proportioned roof frames the pedestrian/car entrance. This transition space is a constructed perspective (rejecting any ideal viewing point), a reciprocal scenographic framing of inner and outer world. The hovering roof grows out of and connects the two larger shops. Logistics are critical – 18 m long lorries cross the piazza and disappear into the building.

The exaggerated scale of the wooden window frames in RS (which sells wooden furniture) are stacked like boxes (These 35 cm wide frames sidestep a local building regulation that prohibits wooden facades on retail structures). A dialogue between contained and container that continues in the interior detailing. Both structure (prefabricated concrete) and the materiality (fibre-cement panels) of the facades respond with an economic and systemized appropriateness to the ‘outlet’ building type.

RS Yellow Naturholzmöbel, Münster, christian Richters

RS Yellow Naturholzmöbel, Münster, Lageplan, plan

RS Yellow Naturholzmöbel, Münster, floorplan

RS Yellow Naturholzmöbel, Münster, model, Modell

Warendorf Strasse, WLV offices, Münster, muenster, Christian richters, Büros

WLV Office Building

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Office

COUNTRY: Germany

CITY: Münster

YEAR: 1995

COMPETITION: 1992, First prize

GFA: 7.200 sqm

CLIENT: WLV

AWARDS: German Architecture Award 1996, commendation

PHOTOS: © Christian Richters

The reflective surface of the ‘dark green glazed’ brick animates a monolithic self-focusing form. An ambiguous surface alternating between the brilliance of the sky or the depths of black shadow. Mass is also the subject, a single building block in the urban fabric. A block further animated by the vectorial trajectory of the adjacent railway which instigates a façade curve and lean. A relatively simple slippage whose justification lies not in its formal but its tectonic resolution. Each brick course slips out one cm from the one supporting it. For the train traveller the WLV building is an event of a few seconds, its deflection perhaps only the effect of speed, its roof perhaps only temporarily hovering.

The three floors and 7.000 sqm of offices house a branch of local government that deals with the administration of psychiatric services. Shops on the ground and rooftop canteen-restaurant complete the sandwich. A specified planning module of 1.625 m results in a deep precast concrete fin on each axis, visible structure in unpainted concrete defining a window zone for heating, cable canals and glare blinds. From inside window frames disappear behind fins, to the south sun screens extend the internal ceiling line beyond the window. Systematised cellular offices are animated by contextual deflexions in the overall plan form, resulting in serpentine office strips, floating service islands, the ‘elastic plan’. Not high but low-tech is here and in the entire building thematizing, the simple, the well made, the long lasting.

Warendorf Strasse, WLV offices, Münster, muenster, plan, ground floor, grundriss, Büros

Warendorf Strasse, WLV offices, Münster, muenster, zeichnung, Isometrie, isometry, drawing, Büros

Warendorf Strasse, WLV offices, Münster, muenster, Modell, model, Büros

Warendorf Strasse, WLV offices, Münster, muenster, zeichnung, Isometrie, isometry, drawing, sketch, Skizze, Büros

Warendorf Strasse, WLV offices, Münster, muenster, zeichnung, lageplan, siteplan, site, drawing, Büros

Warendorf Strasse, WLV offices, Münster, muenster, zeichnung, sketch, Skizze, Aquarell, Peter Wilson, Büros

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).

Dieze Training Centre

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Educational

COUNTRY: Germany

CITY: Castrop-Rauxel

YEAR: 1996

COMPETITION: 1994, First Prize

GFA: 3.000 sqm

CLIENT: GEWO, Castrop-Rauxel

A branch of the Open University Hagen and a Women’s Retraining Centre – shared conference and seminar facilities. Anchor box plus geometric extensions. The alien conference element cantilevers acrobatically. Strict plan geometries evolve a three dimensional language of interlocking materials.