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).

St. Sebastian

Detail

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.

st sebastian_munster_christian richters_facade

View across the outdoor area

Idea Sketch

Model

st sebastian_munster_markus Hauschild_interior

Indoor play decks

st sebastian_munster_markus hauschild_exterior

Annex in the East

Interior

Siteplan

East elevation with main entrance

South elevation

Plans

st Sebastian_munster_ahlbrand-dornseiff_wakonigg_historical

Historical image of the church

Construction

Housing at St. Sebastian

Detail

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.

housing at st sebastian_munster_roman mensing_facade

Street façade embracing the tree

housing at st sebastian_munster_roman mensing_north facade detail

Façade facing the park

Façade and autumnal trees

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Façade facing the kindergarten

Dark brick façade detail

Façade embracing the tree

Siteplan

housing at st sebastian_munster_roman mensing_plan

Standard floor plan

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).

Kita Frankfurt Bergen Enkheim

Detail

The latest BOLLES+WILSON kindergarten is now, after a protracted incubation open for its 60 mini-customers.

It is beside a fire station and behind suburban villas in Frankfurt’s Bergen Enkheim district.

The `coat of many colours´ façade is wood, sustainable, a signal for the building’s `passive house´ status. Colourful sun awnings animate the south façade where the six group rooms open to the playground or to the first floor balcony (where stairs connect down to playground). Sliding white sunscreens on the East and West façades also give night time security for open windows.
The flat roof is planted for rainwater retention and for insect habitat.
The compact volume and upper level multi purpose room are consequence of the limited site and a ground level change 2,20 m.
The interior circulation gallery is animated by an optimistic green/yellow wall with giant foot/hand prints.
A thematicising of scale is endemic to a building whose customers are only 90 centimeters tall.