For us, the key to the Aesop brand is about being intimate and local wherever it goes – to create a neighborhood store that felt like it belonged in New Zealand.

We wanted to celebrate the domestic rituals of washing, and the Aesop philosophy in a New Zealand way, with utility, simplicity and egalitarianism.

We worked with native timber boarding and weathered galvanised steel, familiar materials you would find in a kiwi bach, or an old New Zealand colonial washroom.

Our process was one of pairing back and assembling these materials to echo the utilitarian past life of the building, and its new life as an Aesop store celebrating water and washing, and a nostalgia for the robust, uncomplicated kiwi lifestyle.