VIVA la VIA
With a keen sense for combining art and craftsmanship and against all odds, the married couple Almut Lager and Norbert Kummermehr set themselves the task of bringing more colour and diversity of form back into homes and rooms. Within a few years, they managed to build up a globally active family business for the production and distribution of decorative cement mosaic and terrazzo tiles. The success story began in the old slate grinding plant in Kaub, where the young family moved in 2003.
While she was still renovating the local industrial monument from the 1940s from scratch and creating a new living and working environment with her colourful mosaics, her products conquered the floors and walls of shops, restaurants, hotels, churches and homes. The high demand and constant expansion of their product range soon required larger storage capacities and logistics space, which is why the company moved from Kaub to the other bank of the Rhine in 2011. Only a pavement's width away from the federal road 9 and the railway embankment directly next to it, the stately traditional house of the Geiling sparkling wine pressing company waited for over ten years at the southern entrance to Bacharach to be kissed awake again.
A challenge and an opportunity at the same time, because the ensemble built between 1913 and 1921 as a representative château, whose completion was prevented by the two world wars, was a listed building and at the same time had potential for change and expansion. Today, in the entrance hall hangs a drawing of the original building design, which was planned to be almost twice as large. A couple found it when clearing out the warehouse and gave it to the company owners as a gift. Instead of champagne, cement mosaic, terrazzo and pavement slabs as well as wall paints are now stored in the long vaulted corridors, which are delivered all over the world from the new 1,000 square metre glass hall. The representational idea of the champagne house also lives on in the exhibition and office spaces. This can be experienced most impressively in the Blue Salon with its surrounding stucco frieze, corresponding VIA floor tiles and spectacular view of the Rhine. The company's philosophy of continuing to build, yet not finishing, leaves room for future changes: living building culture between the old and the new!