Studio Pregesbauer won the competition and subsequent negotiated procedure for the refurbishment of the foyer and shop of Vienna’s Spanish Riding School, an institution with more than 450 years of history.

The entrance occupies rooms originally designed for other uses. They form an urban sequence between Michaelerplatz and the Winter Riding Hall, originally planned by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and completed by his son Joseph Emanuel.

The exisiting foyer is too small for the functions it accommodates. To make more room, later built-in elements, wall linings and suspended ceilings are removed wherever possible, exposing the historic surfaces and recovering the rooms’ proportions. Ticket desks, storage and services are integrated into existing wall niches. This inhabited poché keeps the centre of the foyer open for circulation and gathering.

In the shop, a long shelving system forms a room within a room. It organises display and storage and gives the shop its spatial structure. The new elements stand in front of the historic walls. Furniture takes on most of the reorganisation, keeping interventions in the building fabric to a minimum.