Architecture as a brand signature
Corporate Architecture Concept for INTERSPAR
Many locations, one architectural language: With a stringent concept, we translated the identity of the Austrian retail company into architecturally distinctive forms and spaces. INTERSPAR implemented the CA in a context-sensitive manner.
Making brand identity visible
In 1998, as part of a limited design competition, we developed an architectural concept for INTERSPAR shopping centers. Our goal was to make the company’s values – openness, functionality, and customer orientation – architecturally visible, tangible, and transferable over the long term. We focused on staging the shopping experience architecturally, creating a modern and welcoming atmosphere, and ensuring efficiency in planning, operation, and lifecycle.
Corporate architecture makes it possible to translate corporate values and culture into built reality and to stage them with a strong identity.
Robert Kelca
Architect, Partner, Managing Director in Vienna
The aesthetically distinctive, urban concept for INTERSPAR is based on the principles of transparency, generosity, and a clear formal and material language. Our idea was to create a striking external presence and an experience-oriented sense of space inside. Urban design elements such as plazas, boulevards, and streets structure the interiors and stage daily life as if in a city. A diagonally positioned pylon serves across all sites as a landmark and brand emblem. The entrance area, accentuated by a red frame, integrates the logo, entrance vestibule, and a light tunnel.
Customers are welcomed by a “gallery corridor” that, in various versions, pierces the building envelope. Large, transparent front facades at the entrance offer views into the building and showcase the interior like a stage. Natural-colored aluminum wraps the closed section of the facade. The loadbearing structure is separated from the exterior skin and consists of slender reinforced concrete skeleton elements and/or timber trusses.
Concept-based planning – integrated and site-specific
ATP has gone on to implement the corporate architecture concept with a site-specific approach in multiple projects. In Mistelbach, a renovation was carried out during ongoing operations. An open mall, a transparent entrance, and a prominently cantilevered canopy now define the new appearance. In Wels, a curved timber roof above a nearly 200-meter-long glass facade emphasizes the openness of the fully refurbished hypermarket. At night, the LED-lit underside of the canopy waves ensures long-distance visibility. In Imst, a cube clad in wooden shingles interprets the concept within an Alpine context. A generous glass facade and visible timber elements in the interior show how local design scopes can be harmonized with brand-specific architectural language. Additional remodeling and new-build projects were completed in Salzburg, Leoben, Linz, Rum/Innsbruck, Vienna, and Graz-Nord.
