Most IKEA stores take up a huge amount of space — about 300,000 square feet on average, including the parking lots. That’s roughly the size of five football fields. So perhaps it’s not too surprising that they’re usually located well outside major metro areas, in suburban or industrial settings that can be hard to reach via public transit.

But the Swedish company realizes that people in big cities want to stop by, grab what they need, and head home on the bus or subway, so they’ve recently started experimenting with a few new options. In 2019, they opened a few small, boutique-style stores in New York, London, and Paris that allowed customers to see and feel the goods and order them for delivery, but that still didn’t seem to satisfy the desire to actually shop. Now, in a first for the retailer, a new urban store in Vienna will offer full service right by the Westbahnhof train station. There’s just one catch: there’s absolutely zero parking. That’s kind of the whole point. Designed by Querkraft Architekten, the new seven-story store consists of a bunch of airy, open modular boxes stacked on top of each other, with greenery poking out in every direction. It’s directly marketed to people who will be arriving on foot, bicycle, or public transit.

“The concept focuses on the current mega trends and takes into account the dramatically changed shopping behavior, as well as a new form of mobility without a car,&rdq...