Page 49 - ArchDC_Winter2017

ArchDC Winter 2017.qxp_Fall 2017 11/17/17 5:49 PM Page 47

Citation for Detail

Aesop The Shay
Washington, DC
David Jameson Architect
General Contractor: Madden, CCI

The Australian cosmetics firm Aesop is perhaps an ideal
client. The company’s stated goal is that the designs of its
stores match its products in terms of “meticulous atten-
tion to detail, and with efficacy and sensory pleasure in
mind.” Aesop commissions modern spaces that, while
tending to avoid obvious regional references, are never-
theless tied to their locations, incorporating concepts,
details, and materials drawn from local circumstances.
The stores are small—truly boutiques—and the products Aesop the Shay, as seen from the sidewalk. Photos © Paul Barbera Photography
(lotions and notions for hair, skin, and body) come in
impeccably matched containers.
Best of all, Aesop’s practice is to hire local talent for
each store. For its first DC location, in the Shay mixed-use
development at the eastern end of the U Street corridor,
architect David Jameson, FAIA, proved a perfect match
for Aesop’s aspirations. The design is conceived to be an
“abstracted spatial experience” distilled from the history
of U Street as a center for jazz music. The brass of the
shelving armature alludes to musical instruments like
trumpets and trombones. Aesop’s amber bottles are
placed on the shelves in a way that suggests musical
notes on a staff, and the translucent elements glowing in
the shelving are actual drum skins. Jameson stated that
the interior, overall, is “conceived as a tectonic instrument
in its own right.”
Most of Aesop’s customers, of course, are unlikely to
grasp these conceptual underpinnings. They’re drawn to
the warm glow of the drum skins and the elegant interior
that, without apparent conflict or contradiction, marries
the organic, authentic character of an industrial loft with a
sumptuous minimalism. Perhaps they may subconsciously Shop interior.
take the clean, glowing interior as a metaphor for what
Aesop’s products will do to their skin and hair. To
bridge the gap (at least a little), Jameson’s design provides
a hint, in the form of a quotation from Friedrich Wilhelm
Joseph von Schelling, stenciled on one wall of the
shop: “Architecture is music in space, as it were a
frozen music.”

Aesop the Shay was previously covered in the Spring 2017
issue of ARCHITECTUREDC.

Shelves with drum skin panels.

COMMERCIAL SUCCESSES 47