The Vienna-based architectural firm BWM Architekten – led by Erich Bernard,  Daniela Walten, Johann Moser and Markus Kaplan – won the “Excellent Architecture” category of German Design Award 2020, the international premium prize of the German Design Council that received more than 5,400 submissions last year. Looking for innovative designers in the German and international design scene, the competition decided to reward the Austrian studio for the project of Salon Sacher – already ranked among the Top 5 bars in Europe by Ahead Europe 2019 – and the project of House of Austrian History. Salon Sacher is a transformation of the Sacher Tube: interiors have 1920s and 1950s reminiscences, in a “cohesive unit that marries the past and the present”, as BWM architect and interior design expert Erich Bernard describes them.

The House of Austrian History – the museum of contemporary Austrian history – has been awarded by German Design Award for the relation between the contemporary history of the museum and the imperial architecture of the Neue Burg at Vienna’s Heldenplatz. “We have tried to make productive use of this – typically Austrian – tension and to use this monumental architecture as a flywheel mass for both an impressive spatial experience and enlightening insights,” explains BWM architect Johann Moser.