Department store, Cologne

Having proved its architectural acumen with commissions by Richard Meier (Düsseldorf) and Christoph Ingenhoven (Chemnitz, Lübeck), Peek & Cloppenburg chose the Genoese architect Renzo Piano to design its store in Cologne. His response was a two-part complex: a more traditional building, and beside it an amorphous structure that offers several floors of conventional retail space, but whose huge glass roof evokes the greenhouses of the nineteenth century. The facade, developed by the Stuttgart engineers Knippers Helbig, is constructed as an ingenious convex surface supported by vertical wooden arches set apart from the inner structure and stabilized by diagonal steel ropes.

Retailers clearly hope that such spectacular architecture will help upgrade the inner cities. In the case of this project, it appears as if the urban environment is being taken as seriously as the merchandise, since the facade is unlikely to become a 'commercial showcase' in the conventional sense. The gap between the inner structure and the glass shell creates a theatrical situation, with shoppers on stages looking out at their audience in the street, and vice versa. Today, this kind of focus on city life is a necessary part of any retail strategy.