IKEA Vienna Westbahnhof

The world’s first car-free, urban IKEA is located at Vienna’s railway station ‚Westbahnhof‘  and opened in 2021. Customers will not come by car, but by public transport, by bike or on foot.

In search of ideas for the inner-city location, IKEA invited nine architectural offices from Europe in 2017 to a competition. The idea of querkraft architekten convinced the company, werkraum ingenieure acted as test engineer lt.OIB for this pilot project.

The outer shell is reminiscent of a shelf. A 4.5 meter deep zone wraps itself around the core building like a giant shelf and in this way allows room extensions, offers space for greenery and many terraces. Elements such as elevators, emergency stairs, toilets and building services also find their place in this outer layer.