Squaring the circle:
The shopping centre eye-catcher

The Wandsbek Quarree is, without a doubt, the focus of business activities in the Wandsbek quarter of Hamburg. This modern shopping paradise was built in 1988 on the site of an old factory. Now, in excess of 90 specialist stores encourage visitors to indulge in an extensive shopping trip. The centre is visited by 40,000 customers a day, and on peak days this figure can rise to 75,000. The shopping centre is almost perfectly styled on the inside, but to give it that extra "wow" factor, the entire exterior has been renewed with an applied stainless steel facade.

Even the entrance area has been given a strikingly prominent steel construction with a slotted plate facade. Inside the cube, "floating" 12 metres up, is the letter "Q" – which is a particularly effective eye-catcher in the evening hours. Illuminated from behind with a total of 1900 LEDs, the lighting installation is made of a white backlit fabric and yellow self-adhesive foil and is a real eye catcher for drivers and pedestrians on the Wandsbeker Marktstrasse. The 5.4 x 5.4 m large "Q" is made up of EPS.LUMI profiles sawn at the rounded edges. The distances between the cuts vary according to the different radii. "We were looking for a reduced-weight solution and the EPS tensioning technology was the ideal solution. In addition, the required shape of the letter posed no problems for the project when the job was placed. On the contrary, EPS formed the profiles precisely to requirement. Absolutely perfect", enthused Andreas Schreib, CEO of Schreib+Keppler GmbH & Co. KG in Hamburg, the company charged with the implementation of the illuminated advertising system. The result: A perfectly crease-free tensioned surface with an effective lighting effect which will, in future, be very difficult to miss.

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