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Weltstadthaus, Cologne

For their new flagship clothing store in Cologne, Peek & Cloppenburg were never going to be content with anything less than the most exclusive international architecture.

They had already commissioned Professor Josef P. Kleihues and Richard Meier to design their stores in other cities. For the Weltstadthaus it was Renzo Piano’s opportunity to create a shopping palace. His was not a work of art to exist in isolation but a concept to be integrated into the local surroundings.

The Weltstadthaus is flowing, transparent, anatomical: a calm counterpoint to the bustling stores. Its outer shell, a highly original design in glass and wood, was an architectural vision and a unique engineering challenge. In order to combine this extraordinary shape with the required functionality, the planners developed an elaborate exterior supported on a skeleton of glue-laminated timber girders.