Aesop Raffles City

An abstraction of everyday life

Located within I.M. Pei’s iconic building and created with longstanding collaborators Marsollier Villacorta LLC, the second iteration of Aesop Raffles City is a poetic interpretation of Singaporean life. Here, objects common to the city’s urban hardscapes are transformed into elements of the store design.

Thermoformed plastic sauce bottles, trays and chairs—ubiquitous in the countless eateries of the metropolis—are translated as shelves and shared basins moulded from a resin that can be renewed and repaired over the years. The polished metal tables of such establishments, as well as the reflective phone booths and handrails of Singapore’s streets, are reimagined as a Fragrance Armoire and an individual basin in crisp stainless steel. These sleek fixtures sit in dialogue with a backdrop of rough, earthy stucco that encapsulates the ever-present sense of nature underpinning and layering over the city’s built environment.