Bolles & Wilson employs a bold colour palette to display Albania’s national icon collection

Buildings.

Photos
DEA Studio, Roman Mensing

A concrete structure abandoned after the fall of communism in Albania in the early 1990s has provided the framework for Korça Icon Museum. Tirana-based DEA Studio was commissioned to design the new facades and Bremen-based Bolles & Wilson to develop the interior exhibition for the national collection of 300 Orthodox icons.

Buildings.

Three internal levels were formed, with the middle floor containing the entrance, galleries, conservation laboratories and administration. Other gallery spaces occupy the top floor, while the basement contains the archive.

Buildings.

The first-floor slab was removed over the principal gallery to form a 9.5-metre-high wall, where a close-packed ‘Petersburg’ system has been adopted for the display. The double-height space also accommodates a new staircase which offers visitors a panorama of the feature wall and allows a circuit of the galleries.

Buildings.

Whereas the entrance hall is marked by a multicoloured abstract collage of shelves for merchandise, including icons and craftworks by local artists, the gallery spaces are defined by single colours: gold, black and red.

Buildings.

The double-height Gold Room, lit from side windows and densely packed with icons, is overlooked by the White Balcony, whose rear wall displays a row of small icons. An opening on the right leads to the central Black Labyrinth, where individually-lit icons seem to float in the penumbra. The walls are painted in a collage of matt and gloss black and grey, while lateral alcoves provide intimate spaces for single icons.

From the Black Labyrinth, visitors emerge into a sensuous, entirely red space with a large ‘iconostas’ or altar screen supported on a central platform. The final room is an ethereal, white space with an illuminated ceiling where the collection’s two most important icons from the fourteenth century are displayed.

Additional Images