Café SAVVY with Coworking

The heart of the center for Knowledge and Innovation Transfer that we erected in 2021 – now called Unicorn – is the existing villa. The villa is established as an open house and entrance to the ZWI – contact point for young researchers, ideas workshop and meeting place for the University of Graz: The SAVVY café, which was leased out, is located on the mezzanine floor. From the north, the grand staircase and a lift bring visitors to the café + meeting room. Via the axial access you come directly past the coffee machine counter if one continues to a partially covered terrace. Seating steps lead from here down to the shady gravel garden under the plane tree. The ground floor, which is permeable to the south and north, with a consumption-free lounge as well as a café, is also point of contact for the large coworking spaces located above. The adjacent 2-storey bridge, covering the terrace, offers a wooden seating area at coworking level with large sliding windows to the green space and a gallery to relax. Like that, it promotes communication between the coworkers and the start-up office tenants of the new building. The coworking lofts are equipped with large shared tables, acoustic panels made of rock wool or natural felt, teleboxes, space-defining showcases or vertical plant elements, providing the necessary relaxation areas in the open plan. The SAVVY bar made of white marble forms a unit together with the sanitary box placed freely in the high room, they are both wrapped in a white perforated metal sheet frock, which links the interior to the façades of the new building and hides the kitchen corner. The folding of the pointed profiles gives the room depth and the porosity allows the wooden structure behind to shine through. The use of mirrored rear walls brings light into the room and the preservation of old plastered surfaces and tram ceilings complement the composition with old stories.