Aesop Gough Street

Aesop Gough Street sits on a bustling corner in central Hong Kong. With long-standing collaborators March Studio, we have nestled a translucent structure into the pre-existing, pockmarked concrete shell. An abstraction of Hong Kong’s urban fabric in glass and steel, revealing rather than concealing the site’s rough textures. Glass bricks hover on steel legs and machine feet to form an illusive ground-scape. A topography of large concrete artefacts is revealed underneath the modulating bricks. Forgotten, interstitial spaces are fossilised. A floating grid or ladder emerges from between the bricks, evoking the stacked density of Hong Kong’s high-rise buildings. The adjacent street, Aberdeen, runs steeply down the side of the store: views pace and shift, in and out. An exploration of Hong Kong’s vertical condition, the space steps up from the street immediately. Glass bricks rise into an untethered square counter, around which two concrete and glass basins radiate.