3 December 2021

Wien Museum pays homage to the retail business: Vienna's first concept store 'Section N' was founded 50 years ago

Going shopping might be seen as an unimportant leisure activity. Who needs design, fashion or art? But especially in times of a lockdown (ends in Austria in mid-December) people become aware of the importance of consumption for the state budget for funding the health system, infrastructure or education and which role the retail business with its stores plays in our society. Selected retailers collect products and design their own goods in a way that can be compared with the practise of a museum curator and an artist. This article is not a call for excessive consumption. This is a call to select quality products consciously and for experiencing the shopping process as a whole in the context of 'curated collections' of retailers.

An example of such an extraordinary retailer was recently thematized at the Wien Museum Magazine on occasion of the inclusion of the store's archive (1971- 1987) into the museum's collections. 'Section N', so the name of the store, was legendary in Vienna of the 1970s and 1980s because of its groundbreaking concept which combined art, fashion, design, architecture, literature as well as exhibitions in a boutique-like shop.

Image: The picture shows Katarina Noever standing in front of the concept store 'Section N' at Schulerstrasse 16 in Vienna. Katarina Noever founded the store together with her husband Peter Noever on 1 December 1971. The architect of the store was Hans Hollein who transformed a former bakery into a boutique-like space with large windows. Photographed by © Eduard Hueber.

The article about the concept store and Katarina Noever's own furniture designs is published at magazin.wienmuseum.at/section-n-im-wien-museum.