Civic development/Architecture

In many inner cities, modern shopping galleries have been developed as new focal points of attraction. A professionally managed shopping center with a customer-friendly layout and a high-quality architectural design that blends in harmoniously with the surrounding buildings enhances the drawing power of a city centre and helps to win back lost purchasing power. New urban "experience marketplaces" are created by the skilful integration of the traditional and the modern – as, for example, in the awarding-winning Altmarkt-Galerie in Dresden. The City-Arcarden in Wuppertal is an excellent example for the harmonious integration of a new-generation shopping gallery in the existing city centre surroundings. In this way, architecture helps to make a key contribution to civic development.

For ECE, high-quality architecture must combine three central elements: functionality, inviting surroundings, and painstaking choice of materials. This is the only option how projects can be realised, ensuring sustainable success and the effect of being help to enliven the city centers. In our design concepts, we always endeavour to develop buildings that blend in elegantly with existing civic contexts. The aim is to draw up an optimum functional layout, to implement this layout making use of easy-to-follow routing systems, innovative and tailored illumination systems or intelligent carpark solutions and, where applicable, to take all necessary measures to preserve protected buildings. ECE's involvement in the traffic planning process ensures that the centers are integrated in a well-functioning infrastructure.