Wiener Stadtwerke Offices – Vienna
smartvoll Architekten designed the new customer service center for Wiener Stadtwerke, a municipal infrastructure services company, located in Vienna, Austria.
The Wiener Stadtwerke’s new customer service center in Spittelau is named Service Point and, since its redesign, is now home to no fewer than five municipal companies: Wiener Netze (gas & electricity), Wiener Linien (public transport), Wiener Lokalbahnen (local trains), WiPark (parking), and Bestattung Wien (funeral home). The outer loop of the floor plan leads visitors from the reception to a café, immediately setting the mood for the guiding principle adopted by smartvoll and the City of Vienna: caring for the well-being of their citizens to a degree that has rarely been seen before.
“At a time when major corporations are scaling their customer service down to call centers, our client’s successful elevation of the quality of their service becomes even more impressive. Our design gives this service growth a physical presence, while adding a certain feel-good factor,” says Christian Kircher of smartvoll.
Fifty different surface materials protective rounded forms, concentric spatial layout, lush plant growth, textile and glass room dividers, and a pleasant, calm palette of colors and materials create a coherent overall impression. The architecture is comfortable, yet it unfolds so subtly that it never overshadows the functional and public aspects of a service center. The gently differentiated aesthetic zones are unified by a high suspended ceiling, with visible pipes painted gray that are not shy about being part of the customer interface of a technical enterprise.
Design: smartvoll Architekten
Photography: Dimitar Gamizov, Sara Schmidt
