Hanomag U-Boat Hall Hannover, RS+Yellow Furniture Building, German Project, Photo, News, Design
Hanomag U-Boat Hall Development, Germany
RS+Yellow Furniture Outlet Hannover – design by BOLLES+WILSON, Architects
23 Aug 2013
Hanomag U-Boat Hall Hannover
BOLLES+WILSON building for RS+Yellow Furniture
Conversion of the Hanomag ‘U-Boat Hall’ into a RS+Yellow Furniture Outlet
Design: BOLLES+WILSON
Location: Hannover, north Germany
There is today an enormous potential in the re-scripting of grand industrial spaces, survivors from an epoch that had less trouble expressing itself and its mechanical or technical potency than our current mean and exploitative ‘global shopping-centre-culture’.
RS+Yellow Furniture Hannover
photos : Olaf Mahlstedt, Hannover, Germany © BOLLES+WILSON
One thinks of São Paulo’s Fábrica da Pompéia by Lina Bo Bardi, London’s Tate Bankside, or the Zollverein Coal Mine in Essen, Germany.
This was our first reaction as our client drove his black Porsche into the rusting cathedral of Hannover’s ‘U-boat Hall’. Was it a panic reaction at the end of WW II to build a submarine production space so far from the North Sea? The structure of the hall had in fact been originally designed for a U-boat production site of a naval dockyard in Wilhelmshaven. As it turned out the enigmatically named ‘U-boat Hall’ was only finished in 1944 and was thus not used for armament production.
photos : Olaf Mahlstedt, Hannover, Germany © BOLLES+WILSON
Now sliced like salami the ‘Industrial Heritage Structure’ is to house various commercial outlets – a mega Bicycle Emporium where racing bikes can be tested in the shop or this landscape of coloured furniture.
photos : Olaf Mahlstedt, Hannover, Germany © BOLLES+WILSON
photo : Olaf Mahlstedt, Hannover, Germany © BOLLES+WILSON
This is in fact two shops; RS (wholesome wood) and Yellow (sub-designer). BOLLES+WILSON have already realized their flagship store in Münster and the HQ Building, a rooftop lake above a ‘big box’ two-floor warehouse/distribution centre.
photos : Olaf Mahlstedt, Hannover, Germany © BOLLES+WILSON
For the ‘U-boat Hall’ the rent was based on the square meters of the hall’s floor. The architectural question was how to maximize this floor area with a selling landscape and a back of house warehouse for customers to pick up their new sofa / table / lamp. The magnificent scale of rusting columns, elevated crane track and skylight box, resist the invasion of domestic equipment, relegating it to the status of ‘a carpet of coloured pixels’ spread across the selling decks.
photos : Olaf Mahlstedt, Hannover, Germany © BOLLES+WILSON
RS+Yellow Furniture building images / information from BOLLES+WILSON
BOLLES+WILSON GmbH & Co. KG based in Muenster, northern Germany
RS+Yellow Flagship Store | Münster, Germany, 2002:
photo © Christian Richters
RS+Yellow HQ + Distribution Centre | Münster, Germany, 2009:
photo © Stefan Schrills
Location: Hannover, Germany
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German Architectural Designs – chronological list
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image courtesy of architects
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Comments / photos for the RS+Yellow Furniture Hannover Architecture page welcome
