Bakery Grau | Hadi A. Tandawardaja

For a long time, the Kreis wine store was the host in the small corner store in the historic King of England House on Stuttgart's Schillerplatz, where Stuttgart's first hotel once stood, where Chopin stayed.

Now the bakery Grau follows in the footsteps of the established wine shop and turns the previous concept upside down without completely discarding it. While in the past everything revolved around wine, wine tasting and its sale, now baked goods and fine sandwiches become the protagonist. Wine is still there.

For SOMAA, this task is an exciting challenge from two points of view. Firstly, because the design of the former wine shop has already set the highest standards and, secondly, because of the small size of only a total of 35 square meters of guest room and sales area.

The bread shop's area of only about 35 square meters is divided into a sales room and a small bar area. Even from the outside, the shop windows make it clear that this branch is more than just a bakery. In addition to the typical baked goods on the sales floor, the premises also serve wine and offer fine sandwiches for tasting in the small one-room storefront bar.

While the view through the shop windows and at the honest craftsmanship presented in the displays experiences an exaggeratedly real image of a salesroom, upon entering the rooms a field of wheat ears surprises, greeting the customer golden yellow and surreally hanging from the ceiling. Perhaps it is an allegory for our currently somewhat upside-down world.

 Brass light fixtures protrude from the field, bathing the space in a soft light. In front of the malachite-green painted walls, the bright yellow tiled display stand in the room draws attention to select merchandise displayed on the consoles protruding from the wall.

"On an all-black sales counter, with a greenish natural stone slab as a display, rock solid the finely topped breads and baked goods become the real eye-catcher."

In the bar area, which is accessible via a narrow, low passageway, the guest becomes part of an intimate circle, which is given a great deal of publicity by the fully glazed display cases, making this bar one of the most urban places in the city and turning the guest into an actor. Due to the cramped conditions, the bar staff, because of the location in the midst of the guests, becomes as a matter of course the host for evenings that can best be explained by the fact that one "simply got stuck".