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aesop James St

Retail Design

Location: Shop 1, 46 James Street, Fortitude Valley, QLD, Australia

This 2-storey building has been home to Aesop since it was built in the early 2000’s. Lacking ease of circulation throughout the store and a connection to the site.

The client brief was to re-design Aesop James Street to reflect current changes within the precinct, maintaining a strong focus on aesthetics and creating an in-store sensory experience through to the point of sale. The design needed to also consider community, culture and history and accomplish this through aligning the overall design to complement the newly developed surroundings in James Street, Brisbane.

Sitting within a high-end retail, hospitality and business precinct that has an industrial past sets the tone for the store’s personality. The design aims to draw customers into a unique and sensory driven retail experience through the use of industrial materials with a modern twist, whilst keeping true to the client’s philosophy of intelligent and sustainable design.

Concept Development

Drawing on influences from the industrial past of the site, the concept focussed on mimicking the look and tone of an industrial warehouse but modernising it through a bespoke material palette of black bricks, polished concrete, copper accents and black matte steel juxtaposed with white walls. Each material was chosen for its end of life re-usability and recyclability.

Natural light was considered with a hit and miss, patterned brick wall placed over the large window to filter light and create a unique shadow effect in the afternoon sun. The lighting is subtle and moody; spotlights have illuminates products on the shelves in an unobtrusive way. Dimmable ceiling lights create an intimate and visually tranquil ambiance.

The randomly placed bricks protruding out of the wall, from floor to ceiling, act as a visual display and product shelf. The points of sale and washbasins emerge from the polished concrete floor to become small sanctuaries. This arrangement allows a connection to grow organically and is in keeping with Aesop’s own end goal of educating and enchanting the customer through a sensory experience.

Software:

AutoCAD, SketchUp, V-Ray, Photoshop