Prison Library_JVA Buecherei_Munster_Collage

Prison Library

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Library

COUNTRY: German

CITY: Münster

YEAR: 2005

GFA: 80 sqm

CLIENT: Justizvollzugsanstalt Münster

AWARDS: Library of the Year Prize (German Library Association + the ZEIT Foundation)

PHOTOS: © BOLLES+WILSON

In 2007 the German Library Association together with the ZEIT Foundation awarded the ‚Library of the Year Prize‘ to the small but significant Prison Library in Münster (concept BOLLES+WILSON, implementation prisoners). The jury praised the exemplary, user-friendly and new interpretation of library functions and the atmosphere, an estranged relative of the nearby City Library (BOLLES+WILSON 1987–93). The single library room, jammed in the ‚armpit‘ between two Panopticon wings is simply furnished with shelves and counters in ‚optimistic‘ wood and friendly colours. Facing mirrors above and adjacent to the shelves multiply the original triangular room into a kaleidoscopic virtual hexagon. The prison in its entirety is optically reduced to a small central pavilion. Reading as transcendence or Borges‘ infinite ‚Library of Babel‘ are the unavoidable message. A leaf motive on ceiling and walls, like the new furniture, is the handwork of the prisoners themselves.

Prison Library_JVA Bücherei_Munster_Photo_Foto
Prison Library_JVA Bücherei_Munster_Photo_Foto
Prison Library_JVA Bücherei_Munster_Aerial View_Luftbild
Prison Library_JVA Bücherei_Munster_Idee
Prison Library_JVA Bücherei_Munster_Photo_Foto
Prison Library_JVA Bücherei_Munster_Plan_Grundriss
Prison Library_JVA Bücherei_Munster_Mirrors_Spiegel
Prison Library_JVA Bücherei_Munster_Leafs_Blaetter
Prison Library_JVA Bücherei_Munster_Sketch_Skizze

RS+Yellow Distribution – Phase 3

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Office, Residential

COUNTRY: German

CITY: Münster

YEAR: 2018

GFA: 2.600 sqm

CLIENT: Rainer Scholze

The big box warehouse provides a monumental podium for an enigmatic folded form hovering above the (unseen from the street) water roof.The primary function is obviously storage, three levels of furniture to be distributed to the Germany wide network of RS+Yellow outlets. Pyjama striped aerated-concrete façade panels are interspersed with vertical smoke vents.  Such vents are usually found on the roof of this pragmatic typology but here the roof (like in RS+Yellow Distribution – Phase 2) is flooded – an infinity pool, based on those seen by the client in South East Asia where he regularly travelled buying furniture. His plan was not only to work every day gazing out across his dreamlike waterscape, but also to spend his nights hovering above the rooftops of an unsuspecting Münster, Villa and Office Pavilion are thus connected by a bridge-box. Tragically Rainer Scholze did not live to see his vision complete. His private suite was not constructed and the living spaces now function as meeting and conference rooms for the co-operative he set up for his employees.

Poplar trees were also planted for RS+Yellow Distribution - Phase 3
Villa deck, infinity pool and field with ponies
The enigmatic folded roof form seen from RS+Yellow Distribution - Phase 2
Box bridge for the client to trot across to his office
Villa living room + kitchen
Cross-ventilated arrival passage
RS+Yellow Distribution - Phase 3 – section 3 levels of storage + rooftop villa
1: RS+Yellow Distribution - Phase 1
2: RS+Yellow Distribution - Phase 2
3: RS+Yellow Distribution - Phase 3
Warehouse plan – wide-span precast column + beam system
Infinity pool level – office pavilion left, villa right
North elevation with loading bays
East elevation with poplar trees
South elevation to street
West elevation with connecting bridge
Hotel New York_Rotterdam_Landscaping_Landschaftsplanung_Christian Richters

Landscaping Hotel NY

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Landscape

COUNTRY: The Netherlands

CITY: Rotterdam – Kop van Zuid

YEAR: 2006

CLIENT: City of Rotterdam (dS+U), Hotel New York partner

PHOTOS: © Christian Richters

The former embarkation point for emigration to the New World – a ‘Holland/America’ theme. Two landscapes (intimate Dutch gardens and a prairie-like American event- space) are divided by a conceptual border. Large scale text (like a Steinberg drawing) is inlayed in the pavement. To date the Dutch side including the Hotel Terrace, Maaskant Pavilion, vent Funnels, playground and intimate Dutch gardens is complete. despite regular dockings of American warships the narrative landscape on the American side of the Dutch-Amerika border remains unexecuted.

Hotel New York_Rotterdam_Landscaping_Landschaftsplanung_Christian Richters
Hotel New York_Rotterdam_Landscaping_Landschaftsplanung_Christian Richters
Hotel New York_Rotterdam_Landscaping_Landschaftsplanung_Christian Richters
Hotel New York_Rotterdam_Landscaping_Landschaftsplanung_Christian Richters
Hotel New York_Rotterdam_Landscaping_Landschaftsplanung_Plan_Pavillon
Hotel New York_Rotterdam_Landscaping_Landschaftsplanung_Christian Richters
Hotel New York_Rotterdam_Landscaping_Landschaftsplanung_Christian Richters
Hotel New York_Rotterdam_Landscaping_Landschaftsplanung_Siteplan_Lageplan
Hotel New York_Rotterdam_Landscaping_Landschaftsplanung_Plan
Hotel New York_Rotterdam_Landscaping_Landschaftsplanung_Sketch_Skizze_Peter Wilson
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_christian richters

Loddenheide Water Purification Plant

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Technical

COUNTRY: Germany

CITY: Munster

YEAR: 2021

PHOTOS: © Christian Richters, © BOLLES+WILSON

40 Years of Water Research – 20 years of Water Pumping

The 2001 Loddenheide Water Filtration Plant is almost BOLLES+WILSON’s smallest building. It has for the last 20 years been cleaning and filtering road runoff before it lands in the re-absorption pond of the Loddenheide Business Park. The pond itself is a re-naturalizing success, now a bird sanctuary for countless water foul. The glazed vitrine of the pump house now stands serenely in winter snow or spring blossom. Its machines turn two Archimedes Screw Pumps, aerating the water before splashing into a circular filtration tank. The rectangular plan geometry of the first is set against the circular form of the second. A line of poplar trees, now fully grown, bisects these two fundamental geometries. For those inexperienced at reading metaphoric content into infrastructural equipment the fences surrounding the two machines come with subtext – although the supergraphic H2O on the fence mesh is not readable when approached front on, only when seen in the oblique is it there to underline the theme of ‘Water’.

The Business Park was at the outset renamed Freedom Park by the Dalai Lama, then visiting Münster. The Dalai Lama Commemoration Stone stands 120 meters away from the pumping facilities – just follow the line of poplars. It is certainly BOLLES+WILSON’s smallest work. To read its text one must walk three times around the dark green stone. We like to believe that the rainy day inauguration photo documents the Dalai Lama gleefully asking Münsters lady Mayor – ‘Is it really a BOLLES+WILSON design’.

BOLLES+WILSON water research began in 1976 with Peter Wilson’s Iconic Water House. In 2018 the watery trajectory continued with the second warehouse for RS+Yellow both with ‘Infinity Pool’ roofs.

loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_christian richters
Loddenheide Water Filtration Plant
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_christian richters
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_christian richters
H2O graphic on the fence mesh
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Model
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_construction
Construction
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster
Design for the Dalai Lama Commemoration Stone
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster
The Dalai Lama Commemoration Stone
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster
Rainy day inauguration with Dalai Lama and the then mayoress
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster
loddenheide water purification plant_klaerwerk loddenheide_munster_christian richters
After twenty years the line of poplar trees have grown to divide Pumphouse from Circular Airation Basin, a formal seperation envisiged in the original compositional concept.
vzvdg house, Enschede

vZvdG House

Detail

TYPOLOGY: Residential

COUNTRY: Netherlands

CITY: Enschede

YEAR: 2005

PHOTOS: © BOLLES+WILSON

Following the disastrous explosion of a fireworks factory in Enschede NL the new district masterplan by Pi de Bruijn, required a row of modernist villas along the new Museumlaan.

The somewhat draconian masterplan also specified that only architects of international repute could build here (BOLLES+WILSON was pleased to find their Italian chum Cino Zucchi as neighbour).

The masterplan required modernist villas, flat roofs – a geometric play of volumes. The Villa vZvdG almost fell of the list by being too small – But the east facing sun shaded terrace pumped it up to an acceptable volume. The owners, a couple with a teenaged son, needed a separately accessed office and an interior that allowed for constant rehanging of their painting collection – Petersburg hanging system. The façade of fibre cement panels is green + white striped (the traditional colours of barn doors in the east of the Netherlands). Because white stripes could not run around the corner (vertical green profile) the stripes were slipped up or down at the corner – the working title of the house was “Vertical Glitch House”.

vzvdg house, Enschede, photo, foto, christian Richters
vzvdg house, Enschede
vzvdg house, Enschede
vzvdg house, Enschede
vzvdg house, Enschede, Postkarte, postcard
vzvdg house, Enschede, plan, Grundriss, ground floor
vzvdg house, Enschede, plan, floorpan
vzvdg house, Enschede, plan, elevation, Ansicht
vzvdg house, Enschede, elevation, Ansicht
vzvdg house, Enschede, plan, elevation, Ansicht
vzvdg house, Enschede, drawing, sketch, Skizze, Peter Wilson
vzvdg house, Enschede
vzvdg house, Enschede, drawing, sketch, Skizze, Peter Wilson