Kö Center

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The Kö-Center is an office and shopping center in Düsseldorf - city ​​center . It is located on the east side of Königsallee , from which it took the abbreviation Kö , and on the north side of Königstrasse.

History and description of the building

Passage of the Kö-Center on Königsallee, at the back the facade of the high-rise office building, on the right the striking sales pavilion at the corner of Königsallee / Königstrasse with a restaurant and surrounding terrace on the top floor, 2010
Passage of the Kö-Center on Blumenstrasse

Together with the Europa-Center in Berlin , which opened in 1965, the Kö-Center, built between 1965 and 1967, is one of the early larger inner-city shopping centers in Germany. It was erected as an ensemble of buildings on the approximately 5500 m² "Quantschen rubble property" which, as a result of the bombing of Düsseldorf in World War II, had extended over a Wilhelminian- era building block between Königsallee, Königstrasse, Blumenstrasse and Martin-Luther-Platz. After its completion in 1969, it was taken over by the legal predecessor of Deutsche Investitions- und Treuhand-Aktiengesellschaft (DIVAG) in a closed real estate fund .

The ensemble, which opened on August 15, 1967, comprises a high-rise, set back from the surrounding streets, with medical practices and offices on the upper floors, as well as several lower buildings in pavilion construction , which are grouped around open shopping arcades between Königsallee, Blumenstrasse and Königstrasse and in the functionalist design language the Second Postwar Modernism . The hallmark of the shopping center's architecture are the sun protection slats, which surround the glass façades as horizontally cantilevered structures above the first floor. The facility is the first of the “passage buildings” that were built on the Berliner Allee after the completion of the Berliner Allee and the resulting reduction in traffic on the Königsallee; In 1974 the Trinkaus gallery followed in the Trinkaus Bank building , and in 1980 the WZ gallery in the Girardethaus . The numerous shops of the Kö-Center are arranged on Königsallee, Königstraße and the passages. They have wide shop window fronts and mostly sell luxury goods that are well-known under brand names . In the passages there are open staircases that allow access to restaurants on the first and second floors of the building and to their roof terraces . From 1983 to 2014, these facilities included the Checker’s Club disco , where Claudia Schiffer is said to have been discovered as a model in 1987 . In the direction of Blumenstrasse and Martin-Luther-Platz, the passages are built over by the Simonbank building, which was built between 1968 and 1970 ; The main path of the passages joins the Blumenstraße at a transition to the Schadow-Arkaden, which opened in 1994 . Towards the Königsallee the passage is widened to a forecourt, where the street artist Angelika Tampier appeared as the "silent" witch Angela Spook until the year before her death . She died in 2020 at the age of 66 after having written and illustrated a children's book shortly before.

Over time, the Kö-Center building complex has been renewed and expanded several times. The striking sales pavilion on the corner of Königsallee and Königstrasse, in which Albert Eickhoff 's shop has been presenting women's fashion since the 1980s , has been rented to the Dior fashion house for ten years since 2014 . In June 2015, the Dior branch in Düsseldorf was opened after an extensive renovation of the pavilion with an interior design by the New York architect Peter Marino .

Web links

  • The Kö-Center , photo gallery in the portal rp-online.de
  • Kö-Center , website in the advertising portal koenigsallee-duesseldorf.de

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang König: History of the consumer society . Quarterly journal for social and economic history, supplements, No. 154, Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-515-07650-6 , p. 107 ( online )
  2. ^ Kö-Center: Investment example , website in the divag.de portal , accessed on November 2, 2014
  3. ↑ Stadtchronik Düsseldorf 1967 , accessed on November 1, 2014 in the portal duesseldorf.de
  4. ^ Roland Kranz, Jürgen Wiener (ed.): Architectural Guide Düsseldorf . Verlag Reimer, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-496-01232-3 , p. 58
  5. ↑ N. Kampe, S. Kouschkerian, U.-J. Ruhnau: The "witch from the Kö is dead". In: Rheinische Post , July 22, 2020, p. C3.
  6. ↑ Dagmar Haas-Pilwat: Dior is to open on Königsallee in mid-June . Article from May 4, 2015 in the portal rp-online.de , accessed on May 4, 2015
  7. ↑ Inga Griese: How? Dior was done - and didn't open? Article from June 19, 2015 in the welt.de portal , accessed on January 8, 2016