J. Hornig Flagship
Vienna, Austria
Café
Completion March 2017
The design for J. Hornig's flagship store in Vienna was won in a closed completion. The original competition brief was site-less as the client had yet to find an exact location for the store. The initial designs were thus prototypical and experimental by nature. As a result, this early design phase afforded us an unusually close working relationship with the client as we fine-tuned our ideas. It was our goal to create a space that was at once modern, warm, and youthful without being predictable or standard. It was also important for us to represent the company as both an established player but also a forward-thinking and contemporary presence in the market. J. Hornig has positioned itself as progressive coffee roaster, with deep ties to coffee bean farmers around the world and a keen understanding of how to roast and brew a high quality drink. Our design process was governed by the ambition to place J. Hornig at the center of this scene by embracing the company's combination of experience and innovation. It was clear to us that the flagship store would have to be a special kind of hybrid, part store, part roastery, part living room. It would have to speak to the company's past as well as to its future visions. It would have to function simultaneously as a neighborhood coffee shop and a flagship store for the company’s various brands and products. It would have to respond to the Viennese environment but also challenge it with something new.
By the time the store found its home on the corner of Siebenstergasse and Kirchengasse in Vienna's busy 7th district, we had developed a design strategy that reflected this hybrid program. The space was formerly a Café/Konditorei with fluted columns as room dividers, wood paneling in high relief, travertine stone floor tiles. Rather than search for a clean slate by gutting the space blank, we used parts of the existing ornament to root our design in a past. We decided to leave the worn travertine floor and sections of the wood paneling. Traces of the old space provided us with an opportunity for contrast. The new elements of the space are marked by a soft color palette of white, gray, pink, and beige. However, the softness in tone is applied on industrial materials creating a tension between warm colors and cold surfaces, between soft lines and hard forms. Raw oak, glass, white powder-coated steel, and perforated polished stainless steel maintain strict and minimal geometries. The space is divided into three zones, each reflecting programmatic shifts from fast to slow areas. The entrance area with a take-away counter and a high cubic volume for customers drinking ‘on the run’ features the old wood paneling now painted in a neutral white. This is a fast space, oriented towards the street intersection. The middle section is fashioned as a living room with a variety of seating options. It was important to arrange a space that would be attractive to both individuals and groups. In general, the seating is communal and should encourage interaction between guests. Wooden niches along the facade are aligned with the windows providing ideal seats for street voyeurism. The back area is a slow zone, divided from the rest of the space by a glass wall. The room is entirely dominated by an industrial coffee roaster. The roaster is presented as a valuable artifact, a reminder that J. Horning’s coffee comes from years of roasting expertise. Perhaps the most conspicuous element in the space is the dropped ceiling made entirely of perforated polished stainless steel panels. The machinic nature of the ceiling is an unexpected presence. The reflectivity augments the perception of space and adds to a play of light and movement. The industrial qualities of the ceiling are mitigated by the warmth of the wood furnishings, the irregularity of the stone floor, and the white and gray surfaces. A pink glass wall separates the main space from the bathrooms and the dry storage. Like the ceiling, the unexpected bluntness of the colored wall is set against the soft textures of stone and wood. The bathrooms are mechanical boxes clad in brushed stainless steel. The steel lightly reflects the pink tones of the glass wall. Our design takes flight from current attitudes in architecture, fashion and graphic design, where the smooth and the hard, the jagged and the curved are often intertwined. We are also interested in pairing the old with the new and as such the space pays tribute just as much to the long history of coffee drinking in Vienna as it does to the youthful energy of the moment.
Location: Vienna, Austria
Principal use: Café
Total floor area: 120 m2
Number of stories: 1
Design team: Chieh-shu Tzou, Gregorio S. Lubroth, Deniz Önengüt
Photos by Atelier Olschinsky