Galeries Lafayette Berlin
The Galeries Lafayette is a French department store company. Designed by the hand of Jean Nouvel, the Berlin location opened in 1996. Nouvel's take on the store's design produced two sculptured cones. The primary cone is several stories tall, stretching upwards from street level to the top of the building. The second cone is smaller and inverted. It drops from the street level past two shopping levels and two parking levels housed underground. The Galeries Lafayette is the only foreign branch of the company that calls Paris home. The store boasts four shopping floors that feature current French fashion, a world-class beauty department, French library, and much, much more. The Galeries Lafayette also host regular events for its patrons.Looking back, the now famous department began as a small fashion store opened by Theophile Bader and Alphonse Kahn in 1893. The store was situated in a haderdasher's shop at the corner of rue La Fayette and the Chaussee d'Antin in Paris. Three years later, the company purchased an entire building to house its products. In 1912, Bader commissioned Georges Chedanne and Ferdinand Chanut to design the now famous layout of the Haussmann location in Paris. The building features a glass and steel dome and Art Noureau staircases.
