Theresa Obermoser, Austrian-born, London-based designer and founder of TO Interior Design has completed the three-year overhaul of a Renaissance-style building in Vienna where she also has offices. The result is Am Hof 8 Austria’s first private members club.
Her signature eclectic and internationally inspired style combines Scandinavian, Japanese and French design features. The same is true of Am Hof 8. Over nine floors, she has placed a basement nightclub, three restaurants, a shared work space, five hotel rooms, a rooftop terrace and even a few “secret rooms” to create a social retreat, a versatile home-away-from-home for both locals and visitors.
In this project, Obermoser is combining Vienna’s historical opulence and rich cultural heritage with contemporary trends and timeless features.
We especially like the upholstered seating throughout the project. There is a strict primness about them, yet the muted pastel colours lend them a delicious, opulent, by-gone-era feeling of grandiose spaces and wealthy patrons, classy speakeasies and shady deals.
The building, known today as Kattus Haus, is located on Vienna’s historic Am Hof square. The tallest local building of its time it was completed in 1508 and called High House.
Since 1857 it has been owned by the Kattus family whose first business in the building was a store operated by Johannes Kattus and trading in international delicacies including champagne, wine, coffee, tea, tropical fruits and caviar.
Fast forward to today when Johannes’s descendant and namesake Johannes Kattus, CEO of Kattus Beteiligungs GmbH, decided it was time to establish a modern gentlemen’s club in Vienna and to do that in the historical, Grade-III-listed Kattus building.
Open to all genders and age groups, Am Hof 8 is a mix of styles and eras that aims to feel new to the Viennese members, and decidedly Viennese to international members. A tall order that is achieved, for example, through indirect nods to Viennese favourites such as Vienna’s finest greenhouse, the Grosses Palmenhaus Schönbrunn, https://www.bundesgaerten.at/schlosspark-schoenbrunn/das-grosse-palmenhaus.html and through the use of various colour and décor schemes in each space. Tuija Seipell
Images by Vigo Jansons
