How Vienna’s Historic Bread Factory is Redefining Flexible Design

In 2009, over a decade ago, the city of Vienna started refurbishing the disused, historical building belonging to the legendary Anker bread factory from the early 20th century. Today’s cultural hub now features a diverse new mix of options. 

A vocational training college, a learning café, a cafeteria, a photo gallery, artists’ studios, furniture exhibitions and infrastructure required for events with hospitality and a function space are all under its roof.

Entrepreneur, founder, lecturer, and innovation researcher Dr Paul Blazek acquired the third floor plus space to extend at 27 Absberggasse. His idea was to convert the former bread-making facility into a Co-Innovation Factory. The building with the distinctive Ankerbrot sign serves as the entrance point to the new cultural hub. 

Following collaboration with architect, artist and designer Claus Schnetzer, the space was transformed. It reflects nearly all the aspects required of future-proof working environments in an increasingly knowledge-based economy, it’s versatile, flexible, and sustainable.

As a result, the new Co-Innovation Factory covers 600 square meters of floorspace and is a venue for meetings and talks, office work, workshops, and film screenings. 

Just like the workshop spaces, the light-flooded auditorium is designed to be equally as multipurpose. Two office spaces, a project room, a small kitchen, a reception and two bathrooms round out the options.

The furniture can also be moved about to reflect the multipurpose use of communal spaces. The idea is for users to configure settings themselves. On the raised platform in the center, Aline tables and Occo task chairs invite people to stop and chat underneath the hanging branches.

Reorganizing and transforming the erstwhile bread factory into a knowledge hub is key to a materially and culturally sustainable construction approach. Sustainability and change also underpin the design concept, with the various of layers of the building’s history carefully exposed and preserved. The furnishings are also based on lamps and tables from former offices. Today, wire crates previously used for shipping items have become a flexibly configurable bar counter.

Instead of a perfectly designed workplace, the upshot is a whole host of versatile spaces that reflect the building’s past and future. As a result, the rooms can handle new structures and technologies when bigger, virtual formats of collaboration are required. 

The unfinished nature of the building suggests that it’s a work in progress. The idea is to stimulate a workshop atmosphere and encourage people to work on visions for tomorrow,whether these are incremental or disruptive.

The Co-Innovation Factory reflects the diverse dimensions of transformation processes. The former industrial neighborhood has become a culture- and knowledge-generation hub. An office, previously shut off, has been opened up to turn into a place for intercultural and interdisciplinary collaboration. The result is a mix of the old and new and very much a work in progress. 

Health, collaboration, identity and sustainability, the cornerstones of our Human Centered Workplace concept, unite here to form an inspiring location.