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The interior is more muted.

Lighting has been carefully selected and positioned to ensure that the crystals are presented in their full glory. “The inside is more muted so that the focus falls on the products themselves. The cube glitters on the outside, but is darker on the inside,” explained Schloegl.

Tokujin Yoshioka’s Lake of Shimmer forms an arresting centrepiece, and is a unifying element that extends across all three floors.

The 88sq m wall is made up of 16,000 small, independent mirrors to form a silvery, shimmery surface reminiscent of a lake. Each mirror can be individually controlled to create a variety of motifs and patterns of movement.

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The overall result is what Langes-Swarovski refers to as a ‘multi-level’ experience. This is literally, of course, considering the three-storey space, but also metaphorical, referencing Swarov-
ski’s drive to ‘democratise luxury’.

“Swarovski is not technically a luxury brand; but, at the same time, it is a luxury brand. We have created a very specific definition of luxury, which we call a ‘modern luxury’ approach.
 

It becomes more and more important, even in times of recession, this understanding of luxury, because luxury is not only defined by exclusivity or scarcity or price,” Langes-Swarovski elaborated.

“For us, luxury is more about love of detail; of being inclusive rather than exclusive; of trying to offer the best possible quality with each and every product that we create; while not excluding the elite,” he concluded.

Markus Langes-Swarovski elaborates on the company’s new retail concept

Is this a concept that you will be rolling out to other markets?
Not necessarily. We chose Vienna because of its historical relevance for our company.

The founder of the company, my great grandfather, Daniel Swarovski, came to Vienna as a young boy – he used to live in Bohemia, which was the epicentre of glass cutting, and he came to Vienna in 1883 to be exposed to the first electric exhibition.

This is where he got the inspiration to build the machines that were able to create crystals, which were basically the foundation of our company.

We also wanted to place it in Vienna because today Swarovski is very much inspired by the cultural mindset of Vienna at the end of the 19th century — where, for the first time, they tried to combine different creative disciplines: fashion, design, architecture, furniture products, etc.

This is something that we’ve tried to permanently infuse into Swarovski. Obviously, if the concept works well, we will try and find new and strategic locations for it, but it would always be very specific to the city.

Are we going to see you moving more and more into architecture?
Well, we are taking our first steps here, with the Honeycomb façade concept. We wanted to create an architectural element rather than something purely for décor.

A lot of visionary architects have played with the principle of crystal in architecture, and we have never leveraged on the principle of crystal, as opposed to the properties.

The Honeycomb is a first step, using LED technology to create something that is beyond décor. We are trying to move there slowly. Lighting and architecture are very important fields that we really want to engage in more in the future.

Are you looking to extend the brand into hotels and restaurants, or anything like that?
Well, we had a concept ready for Swarovski Hotels; but we said for the time being that we are going to hold back.

We’re working on different kinds of entertainment formats right now. One potential is hospitality and hotels, but we are also looking at other formats. We would like to take crystal to a more experiential level, rather than just a decorative level. We had a hotel planned and ready. It was designed by Ron Arad and it was beautiful – but it hasn’t been built yet. It might be built one day.