Sabine Keggenhoff attracts stares. There’s no doubting it. I follow her through the city: Her simple black dress, severe hair and slow walk – seemingly unrushed and aimless – makes her stand out from the other passerby on this hot summer day in the centre of Zurich. Squeaking streetcars rattle by, relieving one another. Tourists and locals throng across the intersection, but she stays where she is. The traffic lights change from red to green. People stream past her. She waits – behind her, the horizon, Lake Zurich and, in the distance, the snow-covered mountains.

We walk into Sprüngli, in the heart of the Old Town – outside, on the cobblestones, there are two-dozen coffee house tables full of tourists and, inside the giant tinted glass windows on the ground floor, the chocolate shop. It’s big and colourful, with countless glass cabinets displaying works of confectionary art. Everything fits, because it is as it always was. Of course, there are also tourists, but according to Sabine Keggenhoff, they all stay downstairs. “Upstairs, on the first floor, it’s Zurich locals with their newspapers, their coffee, enjoying themselves as they would in a Viennese coffee house, where you can be but don't have to be. That’s how the whole city is, really. I like that a lot”.

How do you work?

“The process is always the same. You need to analyse the store, see where it all happens, so that you can intervene sensitively. Our firm, KEGGENHOFF | PARTNER, always tries to go deep, and not just execute what the client wants, but asks what fits, what story they want to tell…surfaces, lights and shadows, those are topics that are always present and accompany the process. We don’t think of ourselves as people who decorate space. We try to conceptualise, do honest, grounded work. We try to translate the brand and entrepreneurial philosophies, create sustainability. I think that both architecture and interior design are about the ability to see and develop oneself, to assume responsibility, to not be arbitrary”. 

Sabine Keggenhoff likes to use the word “sustainability”. It almost seems like it was created for her – it seems to summarise her work, her style, her philosophy. The ephemeral isn’t important to her. She’s not making fast food for breathless consumption. She places greater value on permanence and stability. That's what Sabine Keggenhoff’s ideas are about, and that’s why she was brought to Berlin to design the FALKE store on the Kurfürstendamm. Now she is in Zurich, where she discovers, for us, the city anew.

The building was constructed in 1539. How did you deal with this inheritance?

“It’s like a museum here. It wasn't simple. A lot of back-and-forth with the relevant authorities. We had to watch out for thousands of things…we created passageways, connected rooms, which was necessary for a variety of reasons. And then always the question: What do we want to do, what’s necessary? Is it really an improvement? What will change? What will we need to do in these rooms in the years to come”?

I follow her into the store. There are customers, male and female. A bold modern interior, raw plastered walls visible behind the simply arranged premium products. The vaults above me, with their big stone arches, create a warm feeling, hinting at the building's extensive history. She waves me over. I follow her and climb a white-painted staircase. And suddenly I’m standing outside, overlooking the roofs of Old Town. The tops of three massive houses come together here, exactly where I’m standing. Everything seems to be from a different era, various materials finding their use: sometimes brick, sometimes raw stone. Mortar breaks through plaster, old wooden doors with weathered iron mountings that haven't been opened for decades. These all coexist in close proximity. When I look around, I am alone.