The beginnings of sop architekten trace back to the city of Düsseldorf in the 1980s. It was there that Jurek M. Slapa, Helmut Oberholz and Zbigniew Pszczulny met as young architects. In the early Eighties they regularly gathered in Düsseldorf Flingern, a former working-class district then renowned for its subculture, to work together on drawings, models and designs.

In 1987 they were commissioned to design a competition entry for the Frankfurt architectural firm JSK., for what was to be Europe's tallest office building, located in Frankfurt. Shortly after being awarded the contract for the approximately 300-metre-high Campanile, they founded JSK Düsseldorf, marking the official beginning of their partnership.

The office was located on the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Ring in Oberkassel and initially had just one employee. However, the winning of the contract for the campanile, which due to opposition from the local residents could not be realised, was followed by many new projects such as the HWI International Trade Centre in Düsseldorf and the Frankfurt Airport Terminal. The team expanded rapidly and, in 1990, they were joined by RWTH graduate Wolfgang Marcour, who would later go on to be one of the managing partners of sop architekten, alongside its three founders. Now together they look back on approximately 35 years of collaboration.
 

In 1997, by the unanimous decision of the jury, the firm won the international design competition for the new Düsseldorf airport, which required a complete rebuild following a catastrophic fire. This proved to be another important milestone contract for the company, which had recently moved its 60-strong team into premises on Schanzenstraße in Düsseldorf Oberkassel. That same year, they won a competition for the Stilwerk design centre in Düsseldorf, which went on to receive the 2000 Association of German Architects (BDA) “Good Building” award.

The firm’s long-standing collaboration with the Messe Düsseldorf trade fair centre started in the late 1990s, when their design for Exhibition Hall 6 was one of the winning submissions of a design competition that attracted entries from more than 180 architecture firms. Over the following years, a number of exhibition halls were gradually modernised and refurbished according to the master plan. In 2004, with the completion of the Düsseldorf Arena, the northern expansion of the adjacent exhibition grounds also took place. And since 2020, the Neue Messe Süd, which was awarded the Düsseldorf Architecture Prize, has given the exhibition site a representative, city-facing appearance.
 

They also designed and built two other landmark buildings that grace Düsseldorf’s cityscape: the multi award-winning GAP 15 tower on Graf-Adolf-Platz, which integrates elements of the site’s historic Post Office building, and the 2010 completed Spitze Speditionstraße project in Dusseldorf’s Media Harbour district with the upmarket Hyatt Regency Design Hotel.
 
Following the departure of H.W. Joos in 2010, the Dusseldorf office split from the JSK Group, continuing under the new name of slapa oberholz pszczulny | sop architekten and has been run by its five partners Jurek M. Slapa, Helmut Oberholz, Zbigniew Pszczulny, Wolfgang Marcour and Lothar Simonis.

With an expanding order book, including commissions ranging from the Orjin Maslak retail and office building in Istanbul, the Campustower residential development in Hamburg’s Hafencity to a new terminal for Munich airport, a growing workforce and the creation of new departments, sop architekten finally outgrew its Karl-Arnold-Platz office. In 2019, the architects, interior designers and construction managers moved to new premises, on Emmericher Straße, that housed all its various departments, including a model-making workshop, under one roof.

The international competition won in 2019 for the sustainable town hall Rathaus der Zukunft in Mönchengladbach, the climate-neutral headquarters of Lindt & Sprüngli in Aachen, and the timber hybrid building Timber Port launched in 2023 in Düsseldorf's Media Harbor highlight the increasing importance of sustainable design planning, which is also reflected in the office's various revitalization projects.

With the appointment of the Associate Partners Sara Schlünder and Sascha Rullkötter as new managing directors, the founding partners Jurek M. Slapa, Helmut Oberholz and Zbigniew Pszczulny step down from their executive roles in mid-2024. Together with Wolfgang Marcour, they remain partners at sop architekten, where Marcour will continue to manage the office together with Sara Schlünder and Sascha Rullkötter.

To guarantee the architectural quality and integrity of each project, partners, project managers and staff are involved in every working stage of the development, with experienced professionals working alongside and guiding their younger counterparts. This ensures that the firm’s distinctive signature style, which has been rewarded with numerous BDA and other architectural awards, is passed on to individual project teams. This dynamic corporate structure ensures that the company’s high standards will be maintained in the future.

A selection of signature projects that was completed as JSK Düsseldorf until 2010:

Airport Terminal 2, Frankfurt/Main (1996)
Fort Malakoff Park Business Centre, Mainz (1997)
Hyatt Regency Hotel, Mainz (1998)
Düsseldorf International Airport (2001, 1st price 1997)
Stilwerk, Dusseldorf (2001, 1st price 1997)
Hohenzollernwerk, Dusseldorf (2003)
Broker Office Center, Frankfurt (2004)
Bahnhof Messe/Arena, Dusseldorf (2004)
Esprit Arena Düsseldorf (2004, 1st price 1998)
Northern Entrance + Northern Extension Messe Düsseldorf (2004-2010)
Messe Düsseldorf Regeneration (2004-2010)
Gap 15 Tower, Dusseldorf (2005, 1st price 2002)
EON Ruhrgas, Essen (2007, 1st price 2006)
Kö 18, Dusseldorf (2008)
DEG Corporate Headquarters, Cologne (2008)
Hoberg & Driesch Logistics Centre, Dusseldorf (2008)
Hafenspitze, Dusseldorf (2010, 1st price 2000)

A selection of signature projects completed since 2010 by sop | architekten:

UEFA Stadium Breslau (2011, 1st price 2007)
Copernicus Airport, Breslau (2011)
La Cour Vivaki, Dusseldorf (2012)
Vallourec Headoffice, Dusseldorf (2013)
Orjin Maslak, Istanbul (2014)
Dusseldorf Airport Authority Headquarters (2014, 1st price 2012 in a bidding process)
Belsenpark Office Complex, Dusseldorf (2015)
Clara und Robert, Dusseldorf (2015)
Academic and laboratory buildings, Bergische Universität Wuppertal (2017, 1st price 2011)
DEG Campus, Cologne (2017)
Zooviertel Carrée, Dusseldorf (2017)
Andreasquartier, Dusseldorf (2017, 1st price 2008)
Equilo, Cologne (2017)
Goldbeck Corporate HQ, Bielefeld (2017, 1st price 2015)
​Quartier Neuss Weckhoven, Neuss (2018, 1st price 2012)
CT² Center for Teaching and Training, RWTH Aachen Campus (2018)
KVBW HQ Building, Karlsruhe (2018, 1st price 2014)
trivago Headquarters, Dusseldorf (2018)
Borussia Park 8 Grad, Mönchengladbach (2018)
Campustower Apartment Block, Hafencity Hamburg (2018, 1st price2014)
Textilakademie NRW, Mönchengladbach (2018)
Neue Messe Essen (2019, 1st price 2012)
Fürst & Friedrich, Dusseldorf (2019)
Neue Messe Süd, Dusseldorf (2020)
Hotel Moskauer Straße, Dusseldorf (2021)
Smart Office, Airport City Dusseldorf (2021)
Kämmerei, Dusseldorf (exp. 2024)
Hangar, I/D Cologne, Cologne Mülheim (exp. 2024)
Eschborn Gate, Eschborn (exp. 2024)
Lindt & Sprüngli Headquarters, Aachen (exp. 2026)
Timber Port, Media Harbour Dusseldorf (exp. 2027)
Rathaus der Zukunft mg+, Mönchengladbach (1st price2019)
Neue Verwaltungsgebäude Rheydt (exp. 2028)
Timber Port, Medienhafen Düsseldorf (est. 2028)
Wohnquartier Feldmark, Bochum (tba)
Theodor-Fleitmann-Gesamtschule (tba)
Messe Düsseldorf Headquarter, Düsseldorf (tba)