Atrio Shopping Center

SES Spar European Shopping Centers built Atrio on the theme “shopping senza confini,” Italian for “without borders,” at the literal meeting point of Austria, Slovenia and Italy’s Friuli Venezia Giulia region. The center opened in phases starting November 2005, with a full grand opening in March 2007, on a €94 million investment.

At 38,700 sqm across a single 13-metre-high volume, Atrio runs the tri-lingual, tri-cultural concept through every layer of the operation, German, Italian and Slovene signage and staff, not just the marketing campaign. The building’s central plaza, a 50-by-60-metre glazed atrium anchored by a large aerial photograph of the three-region area, functions as Villach’s new civic square as much as a mall concourse.

The center runs on 652 geothermal energy piles that supply nearly half its heating and cooling needs, a system that won Atrio the ICSC’s Best-of-the-Best Sustainable Design award in 2009 and recognition the year before as the world’s most innovative shopping center. Kastner & Öhler and Interspar anchor the roughly 90-store tenant mix, alongside H&M and Thalia.

Villach’s position where the A2, A10 and A11 motorways converge gives Atrio a catchment that extends well past Carinthia into neighboring Slovenia and Italy, the same cross-border logic that shaped the center’s original design brief. Architects ATP conceived the raised building and underground parking to keep sightlines open between the plaza and the car park below, reinforcing the sense of a single continuous public space rather than a conventional enclosed mall.