Aesop Shaw DC, Store Design, Washington Retail Interior, New Cosmetics Shop USA
Aesop Shaw Store
Cosmetics Shop at 1924 8th Street NW, Washington, D.C. ? design by David Jameson Architects
Apr 25, 2017
Aesop Shaw Store, Washington, D.C.
Design: David Jameson Architects
Aesop Shaw Store, Washington, D.C.
AESOP THE SHAY, Washington, DC., USA | 2016
?Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music.?- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The design inspiration for Aesop?s first Washington, DC environment is rooted in the DNA of the historic U Street and Shaw neighborhoods’ music.

From the early 1900?s, the Dunbar, Lincoln, and Howard Theatres were the soul of musical creativity in Washington, DC, where jazz greats such as Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway performed. Today, their lineage continues in jazz clubs and music venues such as the 9:30 Club, the Black Cat, DC9, and U Street Music Hall.
The design response by David Jameson Architects is conceived to be an abstracted spatial experience distilled from this DNA.

Evoking the instruments of jazz artists past and present, a clear coated brass shelving armature envelops the interior, conceived as a tectonic instrument in its own right. Translucent drum skins inserted within the shelving are positioned in a manner to evoke the kinetic gestures of jazz artists that were not able to read or write music in the conventional sense.

Aesop?s amber glass bottles lyrically activ...