Kita 102
TYPOLOGY: Educational
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Frankfurt
YEAR: 1992 / 2014
CLIENT: Stadt Frankfurt
AWARDS: German Architecture Award 1993, Commendation
PHOTOS: © Waltraud Krase (1992), Rainer Mader (2014)
The 1992 Kita 102 in Frankfurt – Griesheim was one of BOLLES+WILSON’s first buildings in Germany. 22 years later it has been extended. What does it mean to revisit an early work? To measure if it has stood the test of time? Or even if the architectural themes of that time are still pertinent today?
What is immediately obvious is that a generous two floor, curvaceous and somewhat expressive sculpted volume is no longer feasible under today’s stringent budget restrictions (the political promise to deliver a kindergarten place for every child). The new extension is single storey, docking on to and sloping down from, an original 7 m high sport and sleeping hall.
The 3 original ground floor classrooms were for conventional pre-school kindergarten use, and the upper 2 rooms after-school homework facilities for older kids. The 3 new ground level classrooms extend kindergarten functions, kids can run out directly from group to garden.
The original building expands in width and height, a conical volume explained at the time as a metaphor for growing – spaces expand and contract as kids run from one end to another. A narrative scenario that extended to details like 2.10m high doors for teachers beside 1.50 m doors only for kids. Draconian budgets preclude such whimsical game playing in the new extension, perhaps it is also no longer the time for architecture to reflect on its syntactical potential. In the original Kita four windows conspired to inscribe a giant letter K across the facade. A readable building for children who are learning to read. Today it is left to colour to signify. A thematized May-Green has been here co-opted (as in almost every second contemporary Kindergarten) to signal a fresh, playful optimism. It is the only internal colour. Also a green horizontal beam/gutter above a south facing glass facade benevolently grows extended sun-blinds (also May green) to wrap the sunny side in a Mediterranean-like slab of shade. Window articulation is no longer expressive, a tough neighbourhood requires defensive measures if night cooling is to be activated.
What was in 1993 described, as an east-west slab turning its back to the noise of a nearby autobahn is now a very long east west slab, still turning its back and opening southward to an extended linear play-ground.
Himmelsscheibe Exhibition Centre
TYPOLOGY: Cultural
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Nebra
YEAR: 2004
COMPETITION: Invited competition
AWARDS: Special price
An observation Tower connects an archaeological dig to its wider landscape. Nearby the Corten clad visitors centre with its cargo of sky disk (4,000 years old sky map) paraphernalia wriggles a few metres above rolling fields casting at its extremity a laconic glance skywards.
Moebelum
TYPOLOGY: Retail
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Munich
YEAR: 2016
GFA EXISTING: 4.047 sqm
GFA NEW: 755 sqm
CLIENT: Möbelum Zentral GmbH
PHOTOS: © Florian Holzherr
Möbelum furniture outlet – a new facade for an existing industrial building/furniture showroom.
The stacked cassettes of the display facade integrate existing office windows.
Suzuki House
TYPOLOGY: Residential
COUNTRY: Japan
CITY: Tokyo
YEAR: 1993
CLIENT: Akira Suzuki
AWARD: Goldmedal from Japanese Architects Institute 1994
PHOTOS: © Ryuji Miyamoto
A house as a large family room suspended in the city.
A house with a child’s room suspended within.
A house with two legs and a usable roof.
A house glanced by a passing Ninja (Impressed Shadow Façade).
City Hall Willich
TYPOLOGY: Office
COUNTRY: Germany
CITY: Willich
YEAR: 2003
COMPETITION: 2001, First prize
GFA: 2.630 sqm
CLIENT: Stadt Willich
PHOTOS: © Christian Richters, © BOLLES+WILSON
The entrance to Schlosspark Neersen is framed by the parallel sides of the Schloss / City Hall and the new building for the City Hall technical Departments.
With its wide span-cantilevered canopy and transparent facade the new addition presents its functions like a building scale vitrine.
The enclosing back wall is in a discrete and modest industrial brick, in keeping with the suburban surrounds and at the same time a reference to the nearby Mies van der Rohe Haus Lange and Haus Esters.
