Steirereck is one of the best restaurants in the world. Despite renovations being completed only a few years before, a comprehensive re-formulation of the restaurant became necessary. The proximity to the park was of particular importance to the clients. The winning competition design takes the individual tables as its starting point. The special table arrangement, the large electric sash windows and the slightly reflective metal façade, which appears to be coated with dew, all give the guests in the new pavilion the sense of being outside and yet also at home. At the same time they experience the highest levels of acoustic and thermal comfort. The material of the pavilion’s façade is brought into the interior of the existing, listed dining space, enabling rooms of differing sizes and proportions to be created according to need by means of rotatable elements. The ceiling floats above the dining space like a horizontal contour map, shaped by the possible positions of the rotatable panels. The middle section, where the areas used by guests and personnel meet, is decorated with a tile pattern reminiscent of a kitchen, which, together with the cabinets filled with kitchen items, gives guests the sense that they too are truly involved in the culinary centre. The toilets in the basement create a unique crystalline geometry and atmosphere, forming, as a heterotopia, an important part of the restaurant.

The result is something new but also cosy, something that merges into the background but yet is, at the same time, a strong architectural statement.