As of yesterday evening, the future luxury department store of the KaDeWe Group officially has a glamorous name: Lamarr. It is a homage to the Hollywood icon Hedy Lamarr, who was born Hedwig Kiesler in Vienna in 1914 and achieved world fame in Hollywood.
The Lamarr department store is being built on Vienna’s Mariahilfer Strasse and will be the KaDeWe Group’s fifth luxury department store – alongside KaDeWe in Berlin, the Alsterhaus in Hamburg, the Oberpollinger in Munich and the Carsch Haus in Düsseldorf.
The approximately 7,500 square meter property on which the Lamarr and the Thompson Hotel connected to the department store will stand is still a major construction site. At the start of construction in 2019, it was assumed that the building would be completed by the end of 2023. Now it is said that the shell will only be finished in mid-2023. The opening is now planned for autumn 2024.
Then there will also be a museum café on the upper floor, which will present the life and work of the Hollywood icon. For this purpose, Signa Holding bought the estate of the actress, who was also an inventor after her Hollywood career. In addition, customers will encounter Hedy Lamarr again and again: the actress appears on walls, between showcases or in the elevator as a projection, spatial image or with her pointed quotations.
The main tenant of the new building will be the KaDeWe Group, which is 50.1 percent owned by the Thai department store operator Central Group. Signa holds 49.9 percent.
The Dutch architectural office OMA was commissioned with the implementation of the new department store in Vienna.