Lukas Rungger from the architecture office noa~* redesigned the long nar-row premises of the patisserie Hofer in Bolzano. It now offers a great deal of atmosphere in a very tight space. Konditorei Hofer is the oldest patisserie in South Tyrol. In 1845 the town midwife, Anna Staffier, bought the building on Museumstraße 4 in Bolzano for her husband Alois Hofer, a baker's apprentice. The devotion to the pastry-maker's craft has been handed down through six generations. The centrally situated patisserie is very long and narrow. The entrance measures a bare four metres, beside the shop window there is an approach to a stairs leading to the bakery on the first floor. The windowless space extends back around 18 metres, where it broadens to a width of five and a half metres. The last adaptations were carried out in the 1970s. "There are very few coffee houses here like ours", says Margit Dollinger, senior head in the fifth generation. "Everybody comes to me, from the grandmother to the great-granddaughter. " This long, continuous history and the personal contact, as well, as the excellent pastries and cakes are together what makes "Hofer" so very special. Junior head Hannes Dollinger learned his trade with the Viennese pätissier Eduard A. Fruth and wanted to introduce something of Vienna's coffee house culture to the patisserie. "It was important to us to make this an even more pleasant place to spend time" says Lukas Rungger from the architect's office noa~*. Room had to be found for the richly facetted variety of the Viennese cafe and so the tunnel-like space was deliberately broken up into zones: the new entrance can be opened up completely. With the first rays of sunshine coffee house tables and chairs are placed on the pavement under red sunshades. They expand the patisserie outwards. The new surround to the entrance made of black basalt with narrow vertical framing elements of glass and stainless steel, which are also a kind of compressed display spaces, becomes an airy, one-to-one shop window. Directly at the entrance living-room style seating invites you to linger. Round, hand-blown lamps from England hang above a comfortable couch and armchairs discovered in the attic, there is a Persian carpet on the elm parquet flooring, a painting on the wall shows Anna Staffier and Alois Hofer, the couple who founded the busi- ness. Around the centre of the space, where the pastries and cakes are displayed in a glass showcase which has an integrated surface to rest handbags on next to the cash register, a kind of multi-functional grid made of elm wood was drawn. On the side facing the corridor it functions as an internal display case for fine chocolates and other products, at ceiling level it carries the light fittings, and behind the counter it is a back-up shelf for plates, glasses, ice-cream sundae dishes and more. As a design element the wooden grid extends along the ceiling to the bar where you can drink a quick espresso. The side walls and ceiling at the very back of the space are clad with purple carpeting: this ensures pleasant acoustics and provides a protective atmosphere. An upholstered corner bench seat and twelve round tables with Thonet bentwood chairs produce coffee house flair in this lounge. On the back wall a back-lit amateur photograph from the 1930 lights up the entire room. It shows the mother-in-law of the senior head as a child together with her brother, sitting in the cooled down baker's oven, each with a grin stretching from ear to ear.
展开▼
