A 23 floor residential tower crowned by 5 floors of golden penthouses. It stands between Tirana’s central Skanderbeg Square and the revitalized Bazaar. A back seat to the Prime Minister promoted cluster of mega statements that will line up next to the gold façade of BOLLES+WILSON’s 2025  Intercontinental  Hotel. We have sketched our golden cones against the pink matrix of Tirana’s jumbled DNA, punctuated by two more BOLLES+WILSON planned projects – The Lets Twist Again Tower and in the background the Vasarely Tower. We are grateful to Edi Rama for pumping Bazaar Gate’s original 15 floors to the 28 floors now under construction.

When is a warehouse a lake? – in Münster.

This is the third BOLLES+WILSON building for the German-wide furniture chain RS+Yellow, an extension of the homebase storage and distribution centre by 7,000 sqm. The new rectangular building volume stands adjacent to the original 1992 corrugated aluminium warehouse.

The 60 x 66 m two stores ‘Big-Box’ is (as is usual for industrial architecture) reduced to a regular grid of pre-cast columns and widespan floor slabs. Facades are a standard lightweight concrete system. Verticality is emphasised with pyjama colour stripes interspersed with zinc coated grid stripes. These absorb all windows and necessary smoke outlets into an uninterrupted colour curtain.

This warehouse and even perhaps the 1,500 sqm of offices above the delivery bays are precisely realised but relatively conventional. The big surprise comes on arriving at the rooftop meeting rooms and executive offices. Through the intervention of the fire brigade (choreographed alarm) the roof of the building has been flooded – a 45 x 65 m reflecting pool.

The edge detail, laser levelled into invisibility, increases the metaphysical unreality of this sky reflector. Underwater compartments eliviate the risk of mini-tsunamis. Spillage is collected in edge channels and channelled to an internal cistern.

A wooden boardwalk fronts the large format sliding glass facade. A pier extends out to the centre of the water world. Here one can sit surrounded by geometric groves of bamboo. From here the south facing glass front of the roof pavilion reflects again the rippling expanse of water. The facade itself is shaded by a projecting steel pergola and a curtain of louvers descending at the press of a button from its outer edge.

This choreographed overlap of inside and outside, of natural and artificial, of direct and reflected light, create a unique atmosphere which could be described as an industrial scaled Japanese Tea-House.

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. Pajama 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.