Café, studios, coworking, daycare center - under one roof, in the middle of the old town. Haus Olé on Spisergasse, right next to the children's fountain, is a place full of energy, dedicated to the compatibility of family, work and leisure. Families meet here, children play and learn, parents exchange ideas, work or continue their education. A place of growth - for the little ones and the grown-ups.
The Haus Olé café with children's corner.
How do you set yourself apart from other stores in the city center with your service and products?
Haus Olé is the first family concept house of its kind in Switzerland - a unique project that makes St.Gallen a pioneer in reconciling family, work and leisure. By combining different concepts under one roof, Haus Olé makes it easy to combine different areas of life and gain valuable time in the process - always tailored to the needs of families. This combination offers flexible and low-threshold solutions that families in particular rely on to make their everyday lives easier. And the synergies between the individual offers in the house create great added value for the further development of essential and sustainable approaches that are supportive and educational.
Which products are particularly popular in your store and why?
Café Olé is particularly popular at Haus Olé. A family café that caters to the needs of the whole family. It offers a child-friendly environment with a play piazza, child-friendly toilets and a parking space for baby carriages. The selection of food and drinks is popular with young and old alike, as there is something to suit everyone. This makes the café the ideal meeting place for families and is a low-threshold and neutral access point to the other and more specific offers in the building, which are also frequently used or visited: Children's and family workshops in the studios, advice centers for family issues, flexible working in coworking or childcare in the daycare center on the top floor of the building.
How do you see the future of St.Gallen's city center, what wishes do you have and what challenges do you see?
Haus Olé, a project by collektiv AG, sees the future of St.Gallen's city center in a versatile and lively use that attracts people and invites them to linger. With Haus collektiv, which pursues a similar concept on the market square, collektiv AG shows how flexibility and synergies can be ideally exploited through multiple uses.
The city center must develop from a pure shopping zone into a diverse and lively place that combines stores, restaurants, cafés, galleries, meeting places and educational opportunities. This diversity can strengthen each other and thus offer citizens real added value. Only when people recognize the pleasure, motivation and benefits of visiting the city will the city centre once again become a central living space.
The biggest challenge lies in change: moving away from a monoculture of pure retail spaces towards a dynamic polyculture in which different offerings work together. In this way, the city center can become more attractive and sustainable.
This article was created in collaboration with Haus Olé.
