ISLAND OF LIFE AND STYLE

ARCHI­TEC­TUR­AL ICON KÖ-BOGEN

ARCHI­TEC­TURE THAT SPEAKS
ITS OWN LANGUAGE

More than just real estate. What dis­tin­guishes the Kö-Bogen is its strik­ing façade made of glass and white nat­ur­al stone, cut open by diag­on­al slashes, the so-called “cuts” on the north and west sides of the ensemble. With the spe­cial engin­eer­ing of its façade, the Kö-Bogen, with its hanging gar­dens of the König­sallee, speaks its own language.

THE ARCHI­TECT

DANIEL
LIBE­S­KIND

Daniel Libe­s­kind, B.Arch. M.A. BDA AIA, is an inter­na­tion­al archi­tect and design­er. His work extends to places all over the world, includ­ing museums and con­cert halls as well as con­fer­ence cen­ters, uni­ver­sit­ies, hotels, shop­ping cen­ters and hous­ing pro­jects. Born in Lodz, Poland in 1946, Libe­s­kind star­ted out as a music­al vir­tu­oso, before giv­ing up music for archi­tec­ture. He has received sev­er­al awards and has designed many pro­jects of world renown, among oth­ers the Jew­ish Museum in Ber­lin, the Den­ver Art Museum, the Roy­al Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Mil­it­ary His­tory Museum in Dresden, the mas­ter plan for Ground Zero and many more. Daniel Libeskind’s com­mit­ment to enlarge the scope of archi­tec­ture is reflec­ted in his deep interest and engage­ment in the areas of philo­sophy, art, lit­er­at­ure and music. The fun­da­ment­al aspect of Libeskind’s philo­sophy is the idea that struc­tures are cre­ated from per­cept­ible human energy and thus address the lar­ger cul­tur­al con­text in which they were built. Daniel Libe­s­kind teaches and lec­tures at uni­ver­sit­ies around the world. He lives in New York City with his wife and busi­ness part­ner, Nina Libeskind.

one of the most influ­en­tial archi­tects of our time

AN INTEL­LEC­TU­AL DREAM­ER BECOMES
AN INTER­NA­TION­AL ARCHITECT

Pre­vi­ously, Libe­s­kind prac­ticed his pas­sion in a very the­or­et­ic­al way. He taught and gave lec­tures at numer­ous uni­ver­sit­ies around the world. Cus­tom­ar­ily, archi­tects fol­low the path of passing on all their col­lec­ted know­ledge at the end of their pro­fes­sion­al careers, but Libe­s­kind has always broken with con­ven­tions. Born in Poland as the son of two Holo­caust sur­viv­ors, he arrived New York City when he was thir­teen. Here he intern­al­ized the city’s any­one-can-make it-atti­tude and didn’t let him­self be dis­suaded by skeptics.

In doing so, Libe­s­kind was very much aware of the fact that a pro­ject that has won does not neces­sar­ily mean the idea will be real­ized. But he refuses to give up. The best example is his mas­ter­piece; the Jew­ish Museum in Ber­lin that no one believed would ever be built. But Libe­s­kind moved with his whole fam­ily to Ber­lin and made sure the pro­ject was real­ized. It took him 10 years to do it, but in the end his patience brought him inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion and fame. In the first year after the open­ing of the museum, it had received half a mil­lion vis­it­ors, although it was com­pletely empty. A bet­ter proof for the suc­cess of an archi­tect can hardly be found.

Libeskind’s patience goes hand in hand with his unwaver­ing vis­ion­ary ideas. His com­pleted build­ings often are sim­il­ar to his first drafts. His works are always based on a meta­phor that refers to the idea in the con­text with the future build­ing. Through these sym­bol­ic ref­er­ences, Libe­s­kind flirts with the build­ing con­tract­ors to real­ize his vis­ion. Of course at the same time, he has the free­dom to choose his projects.

A truly extraordin­ary chal­lenge that Libe­s­kind has taken on, is the cre­ation of an entire inter­na­tion­al busi­ness dis­trict in Seoul, South Korea — the Dream Hub. The pro­ject is indis­put­ably true to its name. It presents a mul­ti­tude of meta­phors and unites tra­di­tion­al Korean beliefs with Feng Shui and futur­ist­ic city life into some­thing that essen­tially looks like a fantasy world. The Dream Hub, when it is fin­ished in 2024, will be an unpre­ced­en­ted example of sus­tain­able liv­ing in the 21st cen­tury. And a real high­light of the sky­line of Seoul.

Aside from con­vey­ing con­cep­tu­al mean­ing, Libe­s­kind would also like to sur­prise the view­er with his build­ings. Although Libe­s­kind always dresses him­self from top to bot­tom in black, in his con­cepts he plays with con­trasts and cre­ates the unex­pec­ted. In an inter­view with New York Magazine in 2007, he says, “If a build­ing is good then the sur­prise ele­ment is part of the build­ing, even if you enter it a hun­dred times.”

Because of his multi-faceted con­cepts, Libe­s­kind is some­times thought of as “too much”: too romantic, too vis­ion­ary. The avant-garde how­ever was nev­er the res­ult of mediocre solu­tions. And without extra­vag­ance and uncon­ven­tion­al­ity, Libe­s­kind would not be the fas­cin­at­ing star archi­tect he is today.

KÖ-BOGEN MAP

Keep the over­view with just one glance.
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in and around the Kö-Bogen.
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OPEN­ING HOURS

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ARCHI­TEC­TUR­AL
TOURS

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THE LOC­A­TION

LIBE­S­KIND
CLOSES
HIS­TOR­IC­AL
GAP

The Kö-Bogen’s award in the cat­egory “Best Urb­an Regen­er­a­tion Pro­ject” is not only a sign for archi­tec­tur­al qual­ity, but above all, it con­firms and recog­nizes the urb­an plan­ning vis­ion and the determ­in­a­tion to redesign the heart of down­town Düs­sel­dorf and to lengthen the König­sallee. The Kö-Bogen is here the first mile­stone for fur­ther meas­ures, which will bring a new mod­ern urban­ity to the city cen­ter between Schaus­piel­haus, Dre­is­cheiben­haus, Hofgarten and Johannes Church.

For the area around the former Jan-Wellem Platz, star archi­tect Daniel Libe­s­kind of New York has designed a two-part build­ing ensemble with about 42,000 m² floor space on a site of 9,000 m²: two 26m-high build­ings (Haus Hofgarten and Haus König­sallee) that are occu­pied by premi­um flag­ship stores of inter­na­tion­al top brands, unique store con­cepts as well as cafés and res­taur­ants. Highly func­tion­al and mod­ern office space is being cre­ated on the upper floors.

B2B

The office ten­ants in the Kö-Bogen also belong to nation­al and inter­na­tion­al top brands.
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DIR­EC­TIONS & PARKING

The Kö-Bogen is loc­ated dir­ectly in the heart of Düs­sel­dorf. You can reach it quickly and eas­ily.
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EVENTS

Wheth­er Tango Open Air, the Kö-Bogen Life­style Night or the Fine Food Fest­iv­al — dis­cov­er our next top events.
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AWARDS

MIPIM

170,000 m³ excav­ated mater­i­al, 36 par­ti­cip­at­ing offices, 45 plan­ning com­pan­ies, 60,000 plans and reports , 10 tons of paper – and 35,000 cups of cof­fee, these are just some of the facts that char­ac­ter­ize the con­struc­tion pro­cess of the Kö-Bogen. And the effort was worth it: in March 2014, the Kö-Bogen was awar­ded the renowned MIPIM AWARD in the cat­egory “Best Urb­an Regen­er­a­tion Pro­ject”. The build­ing ensemble designed by Daniel Libe­s­kind and real­ized by the pro­ject devel­op­ment com­pany “die developer” con­vinced every­one. The prize was awar­ded dur­ing the MIPIM in Cannes and is called the “Oscar of the real estate sector”.

GREEN
BUILD­ING:

LEED
PLAT­IN­UM
CER­TI­FIC­A­TION

After Kö-Bogen received the renowned MIPIM AWARD in the cat­egory “Best Urb­an Regen­er­a­tion Pro­ject” in March 2014, half a year later it was also awar­ded the LEED Plat­in­um cer­ti­fic­a­tion. “Being awar­ded the LEED Plat­in­um cer­ti­fic­a­tion is really a very spe­cial hon­or and a won­der­ful acknow­ledge­ment of our work. We worked towards this goal and are obvi­ously very happy that we were able to reach it,” says Stefan H. Müh­ling, man­aging dir­ect­or of the respons­ible pro­ject devel­op­ing com­pany, “die developer”.

IMMOB­I­LI­EN-
MAN­AGER
AWARD

Since 2009, the immobilienmanager.AWARD is awar­ded in 14 dif­fer­ent cat­egor­ies; seasoned spe­cial­ists make up the expert jury. In 2011, Kö-Bogen won the immobilienmanager.AWARD and brought the renowned prize of the real estate busi­ness to Düs­sel­dorf. In 2013, Kö-Bogen was suc­cess­ful again in being among the top three. This time in the cat­egory Medi­ation and Con­sult­ing.

BVFA-
QUAL­ITY-
SEAL
“SPRINK­LER
PRO­TEC­TED”

Düsseldorf’s new cen­ter is con­vin­cing not only for archi­tec­tur­al reas­ons, but also in terms of safety: Designed by the star archi­tect Daniel Libe­s­kind from New York, the Kö-Bogen is pro­tec­ted by close to 8,600 sprink­lers, includ­ing the under­ground park­ing facil­ity belong­ing to it. For its extens­ive fire pro­tec­tion meas­ures, the build­ing com­plex was awar­ded the “Sprink­ler Pro­tec­ted” Qual­ity Seal of the Ger­man Fed­er­al Asso­ci­ation for Tech­nic­al Fire Pro­tec­tion (bvfa) on Feb­ru­ary 22, 2016.

„With their decision to install com­pre­hens­ive fire pro­tec­tion using a sprink­ler sys­tem, those respons­ible at Kö-Bogen have set a clear example. In every situ­ation in life, wheth­er it’s recre­ation­al, train­ing or work-related, the pro­tec­tion of human life must be a top pri­or­ity. There­fore, we are happy to add this build­ing to the list of pre­vi­ous award-win­ners,“ said Dr. Wolfram Krause, the man­aging dir­ect­or of the Ger­man Fed­er­al Asso­ci­ation for Tech­nic­al Fire Pro­tec­tion (bvfa), in regard to the jury’s decision.