The Dutch shopping center Entre Deux in Maastricht, which opened at the end of 2006, has been named as a finalist in ICSC's inaugural Best-of-the-Best Awards for Design and Development. The Best-of-the-Best Awards honors the most outstanding examples of shopping center Design and Development, Sustainability, Marketing and Community Service worldwide. Entre Deux is now eligible to be named as 'Best Shopping Centre of the Year' or 'Best Sustainability Project' of 2008. The Best-of-the-Best Awards will be presented at ICSC's gala, "Night of the Stars" at RECon 2009 on Sunday 17 May in Las Vegas, USA.
Entre Deux
Entre Deux is an urban development in the center of Maastricht. The developers, Multi Vastgoed and 3W Vastgoed, succeeded in transforming a disused shopping complex built in the 1970s into a stylish shopping area. Because of the choice of materials used in the development and the integration of six historic buildings including the 14th century Dominican church Entre Deux fits in perfectly with its distinctive surroundings. This created new and sustainable public space in a top location in the city. Developers, Fortis Vastgoed Beleggingen, Q-Park and the City of Maastricht have invested around 110 million. The project comprises 12,000 m² of retail space, a car park with 200 parking spaces, and luxury apartments. The architects are T+T Design, Multi's in-house design group, and Arn Meijs Architekten.
International distinctions
In 2008, Entre Deux won the FGH Real Estate Award 2008 in the Netherlands, and was nominated for the Annual Award of the Dutch Council of Shopping Centres (NRW) for 'the Best Shopping Centre in the Netherlands'. The exceptional qualities of Entre Deux have also been the object of international recognition on numerous occasions. In 2006, the project was awarded special merit in the category 'Architectural Review Future Projects' during the annual international real estate exhibition MIPIM. In 2007, the project received honourable mention at the Mapic Awards, an annual award for Europe's best shopping center. In addition to winning the ICSC European Shopping Centre Award as Best European Shopping Centre 2008, the project was the winner of the ICSC International Design and Development Award 2008 in the category 'Innovative Design and Development of a new project (centers under 13,395 m²)'.
Last year British newspaper The Guardian proclaimed Entre Deux's Selexys Dominicanen the finest bookshop in the world, calling it 'possibly the most beautiful bookshop of all time'.
Source: Multi
