Haas Haus (Vienna)

 

 

Stephansplatz 12

Tel. 535 6083

Subway: Stephansplatz

Open: 8am- 2am daily

 

Description of Haas Haus

Haas Haus is a modern looking glass building standing on the central square of Stephansdom cathedral. It was constructed in 1990 and houses several cafes, shops, restaurants and various offices.

 

First Haas house

The first building on this house of Philipp Haas & Söhne, was a splendid building in iron frame construction. It was built in 1866/1867 in the style of historicism and was the first large department store in Vienna. Architects were August Sicard of Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll, who also built in 1861-1869 Vienna State Opera. Branches of carpet and furniture factories that belonged to this company existed around 1900 in Lviv, Prague, Graz and Linz.

 

Post-war

After the destruction of this building during the air raids on Vienna towards the end of the Second World War, a new building was built between 1951 and 1953 by Carl Appel and Max Fellerer. This simple postwar Internationalist building directly in the face of St. Stephen's Cathedral was soon considered untenable in the cityscape, and no longer appropriate for its prominent location.

 

Today's Hollein House

The house was demolished in 1985 and replaced by today's Haas House, which opened on 19 September 1990. The building designed by the architect Hans Hollein sets a strong urban architectural accent, in particular through the mirrored bay window. Since the building is an extreme contrast to the opposite St. Stephen's Cathedral, it was at the time of construction for debate: It was even more controversial than the previous building in his time, and controversial voices called for a reconstructive measure inserted into the historicist old town ensemble. But it soon became the symbol of the city of Vienna, which was dissolved by imperial romanticism and redefined as modern and cosmopolitan.

Inside, it was originally marked by a conically widening central area, which was lost after the 2002 made by the Spanish textile company Zara, however. In December 2014, the building was sold by 106.6 million euros from Uniqa insurance to the Austrian catering company Do & Co.