Individual decors at an unconventional beauty salon

Beauty salons don’t usually look like this. At the Panzerhalle in Salzburg, the architects from smartvoll have created a beauty and style loft that is a far cry from the cliché of a pale pink beauty palace – it has brick walls, raw concrete and a down-to-earth interior featuring leather and rivets. The Pfleiderer decors were especially designed for this loft, making it an absolutely unique space.

The distinctive industrial character of the beauty and style loft makes it a perfect fit for the Panzerhalle in Salzburg because there is a fascinating and unusual story behind this project. As the name Panzerhalle suggests (it means ‘tank hangar’), the complex used to be a military facility. “Even today, when you are in the building, you can sense that it used to be a place where huge military vehicles were repaired and maintained,” explains the project’s architect, Christian Kircher from smartvoll. After the building was decommissioned, the site remained unused for a long time. The new Panzerhalle now contains pretty much everything you could need for day-to-day life: restaurants, shops, doctors, a marketplace, a gym, offices and much more. “From the word go, the developer was very keen that there should be an attractive range of services on offer and that the design should reflect that,” says Christian Kircher. “After all, let’s be honest about it – the Panzerhalle is in the middle of nowhere! That’s why throughout the whole building, there was a great emphasis on using the range of services and the design to convey a special ambience to visitors. An ambience that combines a sense of wellbeing with a sense of excitement.”

This also rings true for the unusual beauty and style loft. “We renovated and retained many aspects of the industrial charm that we found when we first came to the building. We were determined not to hide the special character of the building, or to twist it into something completely the opposite. We also felt that it was important to maintain the open plan structure of the space, which continues throughout the whole building,” explains Christian Kircher.

Nevertheless, separate, private areas were indispensable for the more intimate treatments such as waxing, pedicures and tattooing. These treatments were therefore housed in separate compartments, which have a transparent feel to them. “We had a special idea for the various treatment areas – we wanted each compartment to have a design in keeping with the type of service on offer there,” explains the architect. They commissioned the artist Jonathan Calugi to design individual motifs in the style of the pop art icon James Rizzi for each treatment area. If you look closely, you can see the references made in Calugi’s graphic design: hands, hair, lips and bodies wrap around each other, seemingly at random. The iconography in the tattoo compartment is somewhat grittier. If you look closely, you will see red and white anchors, crosses, pin-up girls and pirate beards on a black background.

“Since we wanted the designs to fill the whole room – the walls and the ceiling – it was important to us that the design could flow smoothly from surface to surface without any changes or interruptions,” explains Christian Kircher. Finally, in the reception area of the beauty and style loft, all of the individual designs were merged together into another design. Pfleiderer then printed the designs onto Duropal HPL using its custom printing procedure.

“The challenge with custom printing is that the design idea originates in the mind of the creative professional – and it is common knowledge that creativity knows no bounds,” explains Walter Engeser, Product Manager for custom and digital printing at Pfleiderer. The company can now print almost any custom design. “The artist, designer or architect just needs to convert the idea into a digital file. Ideally it should be at a scale of one to one and it should have a resolution of at least 300 dpi.” Thanks to the wide range of products at Pfleiderer, clients have unlimited design freedom – their individual decors can be combined with any core material and any surface texture. “Within one week, clients are sent a sample panel so that they can check whether all of the important aspects, such as design, format, colour and contour definition, are in line with what was expected,” explains Walter Engeser. The individual digital print motif is then produced at the Pfleiderer site in Leutkirch, in partnership with another business. “We have been working on individual digital printing since 1999. We have been involved in every development phase and to some extent, we have helped to spur on its development.” The value of Pfleiderer’s experience was a decisive factor for Christian Kircher as well. “The company is one of the few firms that has specialised in custom decors,” he explains. “We are extremely satisfied with the process and the results.”