Topping out ceremony for the new main building at the DEICHMANN campus

An international company with local roots: DEICHMANN SE has extended its corporate headquarters in Essen with a new office building. Europe’s largest shoe retailer’s campus boasts a harmonious design that perfectly blends into the surrounding urban architecture. It is both modern and cosmopolitan, with pleasant workspaces.

Founded 110 years ago, the family-owned company is consolidating its future strategy with this expansion and, at the same time, making a lasting commitment to the business location of Essen. As the anchor project in the construction undertaking that started in spring 2022 after intensive preparations, the new light-flooded, five-storey atrium building will perform an interface function on the DEICHMANN campus. The building was designed by renowned, Hamburg-based architecture firm gmp.

“The project represents a necessary investment in the future viability of our family business,” explained Heinrich Deichmann, Chairman of the Management Board of DEICHMANN SE. “It’s important to look ahead and have the courage to make far-sighted investments, particularly in times like these. My father erected the first building here in 1968. Back then, everything still fitted under one roof. Since then, our company has grown continuously – but always organically. The new five-storey building thus represents our company’s positive development over the past decades. It’s also an investment into DEICHMANN’s future. Even after 110 years, DEICHMANN still stands for continuity, reliability and foresight.”

The new campus building will provide contemporary workspaces in a pleasant corporate environment. Its green design will also allow the company to keep pace with energy supply and energy management developments. For example, the new building uses renewable energy in the form of geothermal and photovoltaic systems. At the same time, the existing buildings on the campus are being modernised to reflect changing requirements of contemporary workspaces and structures – for example, with open-plan offices and modern team and conference areas. Around 1,200 employees work at the company headquarters.

The prestigious new building, with a twin-level underground car park, will be the entrance to the campus and, when the project is completed, it will be surrounded by landscaped, park-like green spaces. The existing walkways and paths on the site will remain open to the public. The main entrance to the new building will be on Aktienstraße. Not only will it function as a prestigious gateway to the campus, it will also reduce traffic congestion in the surrounding residential neighbourhood. Existing trees will be preserved and supplemented by new plantings.

The new campus is scheduled for completion at around the end of 2025, when the DEICHMANN employees who have been working at alternative locations during the large-scale remodelling project, including Parkstadt in Mülheim, will move back to the company headquarters in Essen-Schönebeck. The HQ supports numerous DEICHMANN departments and divisions, including international operations. Depending on future space requirements, it is feasible that further buildings on the campus will be remodelled. This will enable the company to continue expanding according to its needs, as it has over the more than 100 years since it was founded.

We’re the DEICHMANN campus! The topping-out ceremony on 8 November 2023 celebrated the completion of the shell, a crucial construction milestone that meant interior works could commence. At the same time, a time capsule containing a daily newspaper, as well as various greetings and wishes in the form of digital texts and images from people working in all areas of the company, was deposited in the new building. The time capsule represents “DEICHMANN’s DNA” – the collaborative mindset of the people at the Essen campus and their commitment to the company’s guiding principle: “The company must serve the people.”

Facts and figures on the new building:

• over 7,000 square metres of usable space
• accommodating 225 physical workplaces
• 64,000 tonnes of soil excavated for the new atrium building
• around 75,000 tonnes of earth moved in the project
• more than 60 bores for the geothermal system
• extensive roof greening in combination with photovoltaic systems