SO/ Vienna’s Das LOFT Reopens, Darker by Design
Das LOFT, the restaurant and bar on the eighteenth floor of SO/ Vienna, reopened on 15 September 2026 after a comprehensive redesign by the Vienna studio BEHF Architects. The room sits 74 metres above the Danube Canal in Jean Nouvel’s tower, beneath the luminous ceiling by the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist, and both the view and the artwork remain as they were.
BEHF dressed almost the entire interior in black and reorganised the seating around the view: window tables, round loges in the row behind them, booths at the bar that now face the city and deep sofas in the lounge. The kitchen stays with Chef de Cuisine Peter Duransky, who has led it since 2018, alongside a wine list of more than 700 positions and a new bar menu. The team wears new uniforms by the Viennese designer Jürgen Christian Hoerl.
For Christian Klaus, General Manager of SO/ Vienna, the redesign will be judged by how guests experience the room: someone arrives at the top, breathes out and does not want the evening to end.
● Why it matters
Hotel restaurants in large cities compete with hundreds of tables within walking distance, and the ones that last are those the neighbourhood adopts. Das LOFT bets on restraint rather than spectacle: the architecture steps back so that guests, food and the city take the stage.
Klaus reads the redesign as the end of a period in which the guest played second fiddle to the design. By keeping the name, the chef and much of the team, the house also shortens the six to nine months a new restaurant usually needs to find its feet. Stephan Ferenczy and Klaus explain the thinking behind the room in The Second Row.
