GRAU Brothandlung

SOMAA takes on the architectural heritage of the legendary Stuttgart wine shop Kreis Bread shop - Kreis turns Grau, Stuttgart.
For a long time, Kreis wine shop was the host in the small corner shop in the historic King of England house on Stuttgart’s Schillerplatz, where the first hotel in Stuttgart used to be and Chopin once stayed. Grau Bread Shop is now following in the footsteps of the established wine shop and turning the previous concept upside down without completely discarding it. While everything used to revolve around wine, wine tasting and its sale, baked goods and fine sandwiches are now the protagonists. There is still wine.
For SOMAA, this task is an exciting challenge from two perspectives. On the one hand because the design of the former wine shop has already set the highest standards and on the other hand because of the small size of only 35 square meters of guest room and sales area.
The bread shop, which is only around 35 square meters in size, is divided into a sales room and a small bar area. Even from the outside, through the shop windows, you can see that this branch is more than just a bakery. In addition to the typical baked goods in the sales room, wine is also served on the premises and fine sandwiches are offered for tasting in the small one-room shop window bar.
While the view through the shop window onto the honest craftsmanship presented in the displays experiences an exaggeratedly real image of a sales room, a field of golden yellow wheat ears surprises when entering the rooms, hanging from the ceiling in a surreal way. Perhaps it is a symbol of our currently somewhat upside-down world.
Brass lights stand out from the field and bathe the room in a soft light. In front of the malachite-green washed walls, the bright yellow tiled product display standing in the room draws attention to selected goods that are presented on the consoles protruding from the wall.
On an all-black sales counter with a greenish natural stone slab as a display, the finely topped breads and baked goods become real eye-catchers.
In the bar area, which is accessible via a narrow, low passage, the guest becomes part of an intimate group, which is given a high degree of publicity through the fully glazed showcases, which make this bar one of the most urban places in the city and the guest an actor. Due to the limited space, the serving staff, whether in the midst of the guests, naturally becomes the host for evenings that can best be explained by the fact that one “just got stuck”.