WDR-Arkaden Köln, Broadcasting office complex in Altstadt-Nord, Cologne, Germany
WDR-Arkaden is an office and retail building in the Altstadt-Nord district of Cologne, designed with a structured facade that draws on arcade-style forms. The building combines workspace for the WDR public broadcaster with a shopping passage that runs through the ground floor and basement.
The WDR broadcaster acquired the site on Nord-Süd-Fahrt in 1968 and commissioned Cologne-based architect Gottfried Böhm to design the building. It opened in 1996, allowing the broadcaster to bring together operations that had previously been spread across different parts of the city.
The ground floor houses the WDR shop known as Maus & Co, where visitors can buy merchandise tied to popular German public television characters like the Sendung mit der Maus. The shop makes it easy to see how deeply some of these broadcast productions are rooted in everyday German family life.
The shopping passage on the ground floor and basement is open to visitors during the day, while the office areas are not accessible to the public. The internal layout connects several levels through corridors, so it helps to take a moment to get your bearings when you first enter.
Alongside the broadcast offices, the building houses a public library and press archive that document decades of German media history. Having these collections accessible inside a working broadcaster's building is something visitors rarely expect to find.
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