This renovation project by Peter Ebner and friends ZT GmbH is about the history of a place and changing tastes and times. It is about not needing a large scale to radically improve the space around. It is about the beauty and character of the city with its reflected sparkling life, gloomy evening sky, raindrops and lights of passing cars. It is about people who are mostly in a hurry, but who still sometimes stop for a few seconds to take note of a special, glittering room.
The history of the building by architect Emanuel von Seidl begins with its construction in the Art Nouveau style in 1904 After World War II, the most-undamaged facade only needed minor cosmetic repairs, but the rest of the building was demolished and built up new again. There are horizontal historic elements at the level of the first floor which the architects wanted to continue into the interior to unify the inside of the building with its external history. A monolithic material --copper--was chosen. First the construction company built the form with plasterboards on a substructure for fireproofing. Then, 2mm copper sheets were molded onto the forms.
