Australian skincare brand Aesop has recently opened a new store in San Francisco’s historic waterfront district. Created in collaboration with Jeremy Barbour of Tacklebox Architecture, the design pays homage to the tenacious spirit of the San Franciscans who first settled the Bay Area.
In line with Aesop’s customary architectural approach – to work with what is already in place, weaving a discreet presence into the fabric of the locale – fault lines and natural rifts within the area’s geological timeframe were key influences, expressed through a prominent racked wall of plastered texture and form. Bracing, stitching, and splicing the surface of the wall terrain, forty-one solid copper shelves bridge the in between, bearing intended reference to the copper stills used in A.P Hotaling’s warehouse, once the West Coast’s largest whiskey repository.
The space is housed in one of a handful of structures that survived the 1906 earthquake and fire, owing to the quick-thinking firemen and hundreds of citizens determined to protect the stores of Hotaling’s Whiskey, an endeavor that fortuitously preserved the architecture of neighbouring blocks.
all images courtesy of Tacklebox Architecture