Why I enjoy doing Retail8

POS­TED BY ALEX IWAN, 06. NOVEM­BER 2023

We call Retail8 the wind­ing tour around Kö-Bogen, a pub­lic, free tour of archi­tec­ture and, above all, the innov­at­ive retail solu­tions designed by the star archi­tect Daniel Libe­s­kind from New York. Just recently, I con­duc­ted the last tour of the year, because even in bad weath­er, the Kö-Bogen’s most beau­ti­ful side can some­times be uncomfortable.

Wheth­er Nor­we­gi­an archi­tects, Amer­ic­an travel blog­gers, Ger­man investors, Düs­sel­dorf press, inter­na­tion­al stu­dents – I’ve had them all, for nearly 60 minutes and 3000 steps it takes to walk around both build­ings. Anec­dotes about the corner­stone lay­ing, the poten­tial for urb­an devel­op­ment, the hid­den rooftop gar­dens, the invis­ible, silent ten­ants from high above, lux­uri­ous offices, win­dows that aren’t really win­dows, corners, and edges – and many very beau­ti­ful and, in part, spe­cial stores and events. There are plenty of stories.

A pro­ject of this scale requires com­mu­nic­a­tion, always, which is why we have also opened the build­ing in terms of con­tent to the city’s people, for example, through guided, free, and pub­lic tours or our Ins­tagram and Face­book accounts that provide up-to-date information.

The Kö-Bogen has char­ac­ter – with its 40,000 sqm, it is truly a beau­ti­ful piece of archi­tec­tur­al and urb­an his­tory – and the mod­ern land­mark of Düs­sel­dorf. Why? The Kö-Bogen is there for its people, wheth­er part­ners or vis­it­ors… includ­ing the team cur­rently doing Retail8. See you there! Happy Birth­day, my dear Curve Star!”

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