This new Studio Aisslinger-designed pharmacy in Berlin’s Schultheiss Quartier rediscovers the experience of a place, where people liked to go and let secure to ask for help, whose aura instilled trust and demonstrated the sovereignty of up-to-date science and technology. A pharmacy has always been a special place to go to. Everybody knows the image of the white- dressed pharmacist in front of dark-wood shelves and drawer units covering the walls from floor to ceiling. Personal contact and individual advise making part of this image, holding memories of the real world experience a visit to the apothecary once was.
Digitalization did not only dissipate the face-to-face relation to the chemists; the visual appearance and the haptic dimension of the pharmacy space changed and even vanished altogether. Today, hundreds of online shops deliver drugs directly to your doorstep; a service fitting well the tendency of our time. The marginalization of the analog, the growing virtualization of quotidian life and the trend to limit communication to instant messaging accounts and chatrooms indicate the ongoing reorganization of the human world according to the idea of an all-encompassing functional optimization.
Against this tendency Studio Aisslinger creates spaces that don’t deny the opportunities of digitalization and yet secure the possibility of true sociability through their analog, haptic and visual quality; spaces of unpretentious co-existence with most advanced technologies. Natural colors make clients feel snug and safe. The spatial concept follows the idea of free and unrestricted movement: No counter predetermines where the customer must go, no barrier gets in his way. Casual seating allows to sit and rest, walls made of glass bricks turn the strict separation between dispensary and laboratory translucid.
The automatic drugstore storage is placed central in the shop, allowing the client to observe robot technology at work: a speedy grabber moves up and down the shelves, picking and delivering with precision the medicine selected by the pharmacist for each specific treatment. The Client might watch this from a cozy lounge sofa and enjoy the view into the light red colored laboratory.
Single consolation points evenly distributed in the pharmacy space create a communicative overall friendly ambient with a high level of privacy. The owner, Heike Zweidinger, head of the premium pharmacy Berlin is a design fan and know for progressive concepts in the German pharmacy landscape.
