24 October 2026

From Vienna's Urban Trees to Restaurant Furniture: Stadtholz's Next Step

Fabio Spink and Chieh-shu Tzou, the Māketo restaurant interior, and a breakfast dish.

Images, from left: designer Fabio Spink and architect Chieh-shu Tzou, collaborators on the Māketo interior (© James Harris); a view of the new Māketo eatery and café in Vienna's Währing district (© James Harris); and a breakfast dish illustrating the restaurant's culinary concept (© Aaron Jiang Photography).

Quick Read

• Vienna's Stadtholz initiative is bringing wood from felled city trees into restaurant interiors for the first time.
• Designer and craftsman Fabio Spink has collaborated with Vienna-based Tzou Studios on furniture for Māketo in Währing.
• The project combines digital planning, traditional woodworking and architectural design.
• Māketo, the second restaurant operated by the Liu family in Vienna, is expected to officially open in early November 2026.

Stadtholz: A Second Life for Vienna's Trees

What happens to a city tree when it has to be removed? Its life as part of the urban landscape may be over, but its material can still be useful. This is the starting point of Stadtholz, a Vienna-based association that seeks to turn wood from felled urban trees into furniture, design objects and resources for public spaces. The initiative reached a wider audience through the Vienna Design Week in 2025, where it presented its social-design approach and the idea of an urban wood archive. Rather than treating discarded timber simply as waste, Stadtholz explores how its material and cultural value can be preserved.

The team of the association includes Fabio Spink, Dóra Medveczky, Orest Yaremchuk, Florian Kläger and Bernd Rokita. Their shared interests bring together design, craftsmanship, urban ecology and the practical challenges of reusing local resources. The latest development takes Stadtholz into a new setting: restaurant interior design. Furniture made from former Vienna city trees will become part of Māketo, a new eatery and café in the city's 18th district.

Fabio Spink: From Cabinetmaking to Social Design

At the centre of this collaboration is Fabio Spink, a Swiss-born designer, artist and master cabinetmaker based in Vienna. His career combines practical training with experience in industrial design and socially engaged projects. After completing an apprenticeship in cabinetmaking in Switzerland, he studied industrial design in Basel and gained professional experience with Austrian designer Thomas Feichtner and London-based design consultancy PearsonLloyd. In 2023, he completed a master's degree in Social Design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Spink's approach connects four fields: woodworking, industrial design, social design and artistic experimentation. His interest extends beyond the finished object to the origin of its materials, their potential for reuse and the relationship between craftsmanship and digital technologies. For Māketo, this combination has become particularly relevant. The project involves more than supplying timber: Spink has helped develop and produce furniture as part of an architectural concept.

Tzou Studios: Bringing the Urban Park Indoors

The architectural partner is Tzou Studios, led by Chieh-shu Tzou. The award-winning Vienna practice considers architecture a social process shaped by places and the people who use them. Its work includes residential buildings, furniture and hospitality interiors. Tzou, who studied architecture at Vienna University of Technology and industrial design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, previously co-founded Tzou Lubroth Architekten. Projects associated with an earlier configuration of the practice include the Asia Pavillon, Lido – Bar e Cicchetti and Kaffeeküche.

For Māketo, Tzou Studios and Spink have developed an interior inspired by the experience of spending time in a park. Instead of reproducing a natural landscape, the design uses trees, wood and carefully arranged seating areas to create different spaces within the restaurant. The material palette is deliberately restrained. A coated screed floor with a terrazzo-like appearance combines soft brown and ochre tones with off-white walls finished using a sprayed-plaster technique. Spherical pendant lights designed by Tzou Studios, wooden shelving and a timber counter connect the architectural elements with the furniture.

Six living trees, supplied by a dedicated irrigation system, form another central part of the interior. The furniture itself required a combination of digital and manual processes. Working together, Spink and Chieh-shu Tzou used three-dimensional scans and digital planning to develop structurally sound designs. Spink processed timber from Vienna trees, including maple, ash, chestnut, plane and European beech. The trunks were debarked, scanned and cut lengthwise before being mounted on lightweight stainless-steel structures. The result comprises six benches, three standing tables and one banqueting table. The natural shapes of the timber remain visible, introducing irregular forms into an otherwise controlled architectural composition.

Māketo: Where Circular Design Meets Asian Cuisine

Māketo at Währinger Straße 126 is the second restaurant of the Liu family in Vienna's 18th district. The family's gastronomic history in Währing dates back to 1998. The business was subsequently developed by Yi Liu and Hui Liu, initially under the name Liu's Wok and, following a redesign in 2017, as LiuLiu – Asian Cuisine. The new location, run by Yi Liu, Hui Liu and Michelle Liu, combines an eatery, café and small shop selling selected Asian products. It also marks the second collaboration between the family and Tzou Studios. The planned menu brings European-style breakfast dishes together with East Asian influences. Lunch and dinner will focus on Japanese-inspired bowls and Asian tapas, accompanied by coffee, matcha, homemade iced teas and other drinks.

The architectural collaboration represents a significant practical step for Stadtholz. Its work is moving from experimental objects and public-space furniture into an everyday commercial environment, where materials must meet requirements for durability, comfort, regular use and maintenance. Whether the concept works as intended will become clearer once guests begin using the space. The combination of locally recovered timber, living trees and contemporary restaurant design is certainly an interesting experiment.

The culinary outlook presented in the press information suggests a potentially fitting counterpart: fresh ingredients, relatively light preparations and an emphasis on natural flavours could complement the material-focused architecture. According to information received by Fashion.at, Māketo is expected to officially open in early November 2026. Updates on the opening are available at maketo.info.