What happens when shopping meets adrenaline? At LOOP5 in Weiterstadt near Darmstadt, this question has been answered impressively: The former shopping center has been transformed into Germany’s first retailtainment shopping center – a place where shopping becomes an attraction. With highlights such as the 16-metre-high Free-Fall Tower, impressive slides and a climbing course, LOOP5 delights families, adventure-seekers and shopping fans alike.
Behind the successful implementation was a complex engineering task. The CSZ team was respon-sible for structural design and building physics consulting right from the start. The challenge: to safely integrate new worlds of experience into the existing building – and to do so during ongoing operations.
Hamed Mohsenzadegan, Managing Engineer Construction Engineering at CSZ, was involved in the project from the outset and provides valuable insights in this interview:
- Technical challenges: How large ceiling breakthroughs, new loads and the combination of differ-ent materials placed special demands on the structural design.
- Innovative structural solutions: Which new construction methods, materials and designs were used to implement the retailtainment concept in a technically safe and flexible way.
- Teamwork is key: why close collaboration with architects, technical building services, lighting de-sign and other specialist disciplines was crucial in order to implement safe and flexible solutions under time pressure.
👉 The interview provides practical inspiration – ideal for engineers, planners and anyone interest-ed in sophisticated structural design and future-oriented retail architecture.
