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.

‘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.

The raked tower silhouette terminates the wide street axis for those exiting London westward. At its base the tower extends horizontally, a Fitness Arm (window to pool) frames the Tesco Plaza. The E Form begins at the third floor concourse, above existing carpark decks. The south elevation is glazed (winter gardens); the east and west are dark rippled ceramic.

Community Use: The inclusion of an additional swimming pool for the sole use of the local community has increased the Gross Internal Area of the community facility by some 30%. A Community Trust will be established to manage the pool and associated facilities.

The Münster Library was BOLLES+WILSON’s first major public commission. After more than ten years it remains near the top of Germany’s ‘library-user-ranking-list’. A verification not only of functionality but also of the attention to detail, to spatial multiplicity and to the ambience and atmosphere within.

The complexities of the overall building form are derived from internal organisation and from a careful re-constitution of the fragmented context. A new pedestrian street on the axis of the nearby Lamberti Church divides the not inconsiderable mass of the Library. This fissure in the library volume is closed with folded screens (copper outside, acoustically absorbing perforated wood panels within).

A transparent entrance zone (café, newspaper salon) leads via an information supermarket to the main information desk on the connecting bridge. This in turn is adjacent to book stacks in the ship-like outer volume. The atmosphere is quiet, studious. Books line the outer curved wall, a dramatic stair leads down through a 22 m void to the basement media library, which connects in turn to the courtyard facing children’s library and back up to the entrance zone. Up to four thousand users enter the Münster Library on one day.

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Münster City Library – Update 2010
With a newly painted facade and new automatic check out and 24-hour return automat the Münster City Library in its 18th year remains near the top of the German public library ranking list.