The innovation and audacity of Equilis rewarded with the highest distinction for the Docks Bruxsel project.

Docks Bruxsel’s happy story continues : after the 2018 award in the Europe category, today Docks Bruxsel receives the International ICSC’s VIVA Award 2019, rewarding the best shopping center development in the world.

To encourage innovation and dynamism in retail real estate, the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) recognizes outstanding achievements with an ICSC’s VIVA Award every year. These awards celebrate VISION, INNOVATION, VALUE and ACHIEVEMENT in design and development, sustainability, marketing, and retail, honoring projects from around the globe. ICSC’s VIVA Awards are the most recognized achievement for professional excellence in the retail real estate Industry. Each year, hundreds of projects are entered in ICSC’s regional awards programs for the opportunity to compete for top global honors. Ultimately, the VIVA Awards are the accolades that developers, architects, and marketers from across the world earn, cementing their status as key global retail real estate players.

The VIVA Jury selected two winners for this year’s VIVA Best of the Best Award for development : Docks Bruxsel (new development) and Chadstone in Melbourne, Australia (redevelopment). Olivier Weets, development director at Equilis and developer of Docks Bruxsel was in Las Vegas to receive this award.

The 2019 winners have clearly demonstrated the talent, vision and creativity of their development teams with significant contributions to retail real estate. The jury of industry professionals particularly appreciated Docks Bruxsel for the interesting blending of modern with historic buildings, sustainable design and great adaptive reuse of a former industrial property” said JoAnn Laut, director, Global Awards.

With Docks Bruxsel, Equilis and Art & Build Architects have turned an empty industrial wasteland into a modern, convivial and sustainable place that is friendly for everyone. This urban shopping center opened in 2016 in the heart of Brussels offers shops, restaurants, cultural activities, a cinema, an innovative 3,000m² event center, panoramic terraces and much more. It provides an entirely modern retail format designed to suit Brussels’ international and cosmopolitan population. Docks Bruxsel was designed to respect the environment, conferring on it the BREEAM certification: (quality: Excellent).

AIMCo and Portus Retail acquired Docks Bruxsel in May 2018 and continue to manage and operate the center.