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    The Hoxton Vienna offers “contemporary take on the Wiener Werstätte arts and craft movement”

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    AIME Studio’s interiors for the latest outpost of The Hoxton hotels, in a renovated marble-clad 1950s office building in Vienna, celebrate arts and crafts and post-war modernism.

    Creative studio AIME Studio has converted the former administration building of the Chamber of Commerce in Vienna, which was originally designed by architect Carl Appel, into The Hoxton Vienna.
    The building now features 196 rooms, a rooftop bar and swimming pool, a restaurant, cocktail bar, a private apartment and an auditorium for events and programming.
    The lobby of the hotel, which was previously an office building, features original travertine wallsBy focussing on mid-century Austrian design, the hotel aims to show guests a less classical side of what is often considered a traditional European city.
    Appel was known for shaping the “Second Ringstrasse” style of the post-war reconstruction period, which the studio referenced in its design.

    “Our aim was to create a design that respected the building’s history and to preserve the architectural style of the 1950s,” AIME Studios’ Aaron Gibson told Dezeen.
    The Hoxton Vienna is filled with mid-century design details”We visited buildings in Vienna designed by Carl Appel and renowned Austrian architects of the early 20th-century – like Adolph Loos and Otto Wagner – which inspired the interiors for The Hoxton Vienna,” Gibson added.
    The double-height lobby of The Hoxton Vienna preserves key features and details from Appel’s original 1950s design.
    The bedroom’s feature geometric patterned fabrics and soft furnishingsThe mid-century finishes of stones and metals in the original office building set a neutral and semi-industrial context for the renovation.
    “We deliberately used the key features and details from Carl Appel’s original design for the architecture and the interior as a basis for our decision-making throughout the ground floor,” the studio said.
    The hotel has a ground-floor restaurant that continues the design themesAIME Studios also worked with The Federal Monuments Authority Austria, which enforces the Monument Protection Act in order to explore, protect and maintain Austria’s cultural heritage.
    Together they selected furniture items for the hotel which reflect the 1950s, including light fittings, armchairs, sofas, and even the fabrics and textiles used in the space.
    Just off the main lobby there is a small cafe bar”We inherited amazing existing features like the large format terrazzo flooring, travertine walls and corrugated aluminium columns, which are all great examples of 1950s architecture,” AIME told Dezeen.
    The interior scheme complements the existing restrained colour palette of the natural stones’ soft hues of green-grey, beige and blue tones.
    The rooftop bar and pool area adopts a more contemporary designThe studio also took inspiration from the Wiener Werkstätte (Viennese workshops), one of the longest-lived design movements of the 20th century and a key organisation for the development of modernism.
    Centred in the Austrian capital, it bridged traditional methods of manufacture and avant-garde aesthetics.
    In the bedrooms, geographic patterned curtains are influenced by iconic Werkstätte fabrics and ruched headboards are inspired by Loos’ style.
    The auditorium is The Hoxton’s largest events space to date”We selected Viennese fabrics with restrained colours and quiet and small-scale patterns, demonstrating a contemporary take on the Wiener Werstätte arts and craft movement,” Gibson explained.
    Besides the usual hotel program of rooms and restaurants, The Hoxton Vienna features a large auditorium designed in a 1950s palette of pale yellow and blue with mid-century wood panelling, furniture and fittings.

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    The auditorium will host events like stand-up comedy, gigs and conferences, as part of the wider cultural programming of The Hoxton Vienna.
    The hotel also has a private “apartment,” which is an open-plan series of rooms across different levels, including kitchen, dining, sitting and meeting spaces.
    There is a speakeasy-style bar in the basementThe interiors of the apartment distil the essence of AIME Studios’ interior design at The Hoxton, with Wiener Werstätte patterns and colours, mid-century modernist furniture and light fittings, and artwork referencing the period.
    Other hotels from The Hoxton that have recently featured on Dezeen include their first opening in Germany with The Hoxton Charlottenburg in Berlin and the Ricardo Bofill-inspired The Hoxton Poblenou in Barcelona.
    Photography is by Julius Hirtzberger.

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      Caged wooden galleries feature in Puzzle Link apartment by Gheorghe

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      Architecture and research studio Gheorghe has inserted two triangular cross-laminated timber structures into a loft in Vienna as part of its renovation of the apartment.

      Set within a historic building in Vienna’s 13th district, the top level of the apartment was designed to encourage interaction between a couple and their children.
      Two cross-laminated timber (CLT) structures, which dominate each end of the space, were designed to provide the occupants with places to work, play and look down onto the open-plan living and dining area below.
      Made up of 698 planks the structures incorporate shelves, storage space, seating areas and tables. They are both be accessed by a set of timber stairs.
      Puzzle Link is a loft apartment in a historic building in Vienna”Through the wooden structure the built-in attic becomes a place of approach by enabling visual relationships, warmth through used materials and a hybrid zone between different spatial functions,” said Gheorghe co-founder Andrei Gheorghe.

      “We wanted to create an aesthetic and practical connection, to gain additional spatial functions and to make the spacious intermediate space multifunctional and to make it a meeting place,” Gheorghe told Dezeen.
      Two wooden galleries dominate each end of the spaceThe Vienna-based studio redesigned the attic floor for the family who required a “sustainable, unique and functional” space to live. According to Gheorghe, the warm-toned timber was used for its ability to be reused if needed.
      “The inspiration for the design was marked by the fact that it needed to be sustainable, unique and functional,” Gheorghe explained.
      “This is the perfect material for us, on one hand offering the necessary structural strength and dimensions but also the possibility of being reused,” he added.
      “This is a sustainable material because all the leftovers after the milling process could be further processed towards wood pellets.”
      They are made from 698 planks of cross-laminated timberEach two-by-five plank was CNC-milled by a local carpentry company. The planks were then constructed using 3D-modelling techniques and scripting technology to give the structures their unusual, jigsaw-like shape.
      This is also what led the studio to name the project Puzzle Link.

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      While transforming the space, the studio also looked to maintain its original historical features.
      The Viennese tiles that lined the building’s original staircase, which had been saved and stored by the client, were cleaned and reused for the floor of the raised platform that runs inside alongside the terrace.
      Although the apartment has been sparsely decorated, a few key pieces of furniture that the family collected while travelling abroad are placed around the space.
      The apartment is sparsely furnishedA minimalist Shaker hearth by German fireplace manufacturer Skantherm sits underneath the timber stairs while a floor-to-ceiling bookcase can be found inside one of the timber structures.
      A black storage unit made from coated MDF, paper and acrylic resin in the open plan area provides contrast to the otherwise whitewashed wooden furnishings.
      Elsewhere, a skylight punctuates the slanted roof and along with several smaller windows, floods the space with natural light.
      Other Viennese apartments include Beletage Apartment by British architect Alex Graef, an apartment with restored oak flooring and clean white walls.
      Meanwhile, Slovenian architecture studio Kombinat renovated an apartment in the Austrian capital into a hybrid living space with room for both cooking and working.
      The photography is by Frame9.

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      Grey shades permeate interiors of Austria's Clemens Strobl winery

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      Design studio Destilat drew focus to the art of winemaking by applying a “reduced colour language” inside Clemens Strobl winery in northeast Austria.Clemens Strobl is located in the Kirchberg am Wagram municipality of Lower Austria, a region recognised for producing a rich variety of wine cultures.
      The winery, which is shortlisted in the large workspace category of this year’s Dezeen Awards, is composed of two gabled barns that are connected by a ribbon of gridded glass.

      Top image: The winery occupies two former barns. Above: The barns are connected by gridded glass.
      One of the barns has been restored, and still boasts its original brick facade. The other had fallen into a state beyond repair and has been replaced by a contemporary white-painted structure.

      The greyscale spaces that design studio Destilat has created within the winery come in response to the brief of the owner, who wanted the interiors to have an understated design so that the craft of winemaking could be the focal point.

      The interior of the winery has been completed in shades of grey
      “The clients asked for ‘as little design as possible’ for their premises, and we reacted to this request with a very reduced colour language and design vocabulary as well as an equally puristic material selection,” said the studio, which works between offices in Vienna and Linz.
      “Grey in all of its nuances puts the winemaking process front and centre.”

      A tasting room slots beneath the vaulted roof of the wine cellar
      Off-white Heraklith tiles – which are crafted from a mixture of wood and wool – have been applied across the winery’s ceiling, while the floor is polished concrete.
      To one side of the ground floor lies a garage and toilet facilities, while on the other is a huge cellar where metal tanks and barrels of wine are stored.
      This space is topped by a lofty vaulted ceiling, underneath which a glass-fronted volume has been slotted to accommodate a tasting room.

      Grey-stained spruce wood clads the winery’s kitchen area
      A two-level module clad in grey-stained spruce wood sits at the centre of the winery’s ground floor. At the bottom of the module lies a kitchen that features wine bottle-lined shelves.
      A flight of black metal stairs can then be used to reach the casual meeting area that sits up top.

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      Grey-tinged spruce extends to cover the lengthy walkway that extends across the first floor, leading up to an open-plan office area for winery staff.

      Black metal stairs lead up to a casual meeting area
      Other than a couple of sofas and armchairs that have been dotted along the periphery of the winery, Destilat has otherwise left a majority of spaces empty so that they can act as a “stage” for the natural light streaming in from the windows. The extra room can also be put to use for different events hosted at Clemens Strobl.
      Decor is offered by a vintage water well that the studio sourced in Upper Austria.

      A long walkway leads to offices for winery staff
      Destilat is led by creative trio Harald Hatschenberger, Thomas Neuber and Henning Weimer. Previous projects by the studio include a house that cantilevers to create a shelter above its entrance, and a wood-clad residence that staggers down a hillside.
      Its Clemens Strobl winery will compete head-to-head in the Dezeen Awards against projects such as The Audo by Norm Architects – a boutique hotel in Copenhagen that doubles up as a showroom and offices for furniture brand Menu.

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