Waves Actisud

Compagnie de Phalsbourg, in partnership with Les Arches Métropole, opened Waves Actisud on October 31, 2014 in the Actisud commercial zone outside Metz, France’s longest-established retail corridor in Lorraine. The center’s defining feature is its roof: a polished stainless-steel surface shaped into a wave, visible from the A31 motorway and designed by architect Gianni Ranaulo as the building’s true façade.

Philippe Journo, the company’s president, framed the €100 million project as a manifesto rather than a conventional retail park, calling opening day “a date that will remain marked in the history of French retail.” The center groups roughly 60 stores and 9 restaurants along a promenade that wraps a central lake, with landscaped grounds concealing the parking areas and free electric shuttles moving visitors around the site.

C&A, Cultura, Maisons du Monde, Nike and Intersport anchor the tenant mix, positioned as a retail-park format rather than an enclosed mall, what Compagnie de Phalsbourg calls an “Open Sky Shopping Center,” its first use of the concept. The center draws roughly 5 million visitors a year and helped anchor Metz’s retail identity against newer competition, including the 2017 opening of the city-center Muse complex.

A 2014 proposal to expand the center’s fashion-retail floorspace was rejected by France’s national commercial planning commission, which cited concerns about excessive competition for Metz’s city-center shops, a decision that capped Waves Actisud’s footprint below what Compagnie de Phalsbourg had originally proposed. The center still earned the Conseil National des Centres Commerciaux’s Valorpark label, recognizing its architectural quality and site design.