Self-Portrait Albemarle Street | Casper Mueller Kneer

The new flagship store in Albemarle Street in London's Mayfair has been designed by Casper Mueller Kneer Architects, renown for their work for the arts and fashion for clients such as White Cube Gallery, the Barbican Art Centre and collaborations with fashion house Céline.
This will be the first stand-alone store for Self-Portrait and sets the design concept for further stores to follow.
The store, which has 233 m2 of space, is set over ground and lower ground floors and offers a sequence of spaces flowing into each other, creating zones with distinct spatial and material qualities.

Three design elements define the space - the custom designed terrazzo flooring with pink and white marble insets, the open grid ceiling which creates a continuous, luminous horizon, and the dark and heavy Cornish mineral clay render, which is applied to all wall and ceiling surfaces.
Simple geometric forms structure the spaces: at ground level, two semi-circular metal screens with coloured aluminium inlays provide the hanging rails as well as visual shelter, and at the lower floor the main space is shaped in the form of a triangle.
Smaller ante-rooms with deliberately odd geometries are located off these main spaces. Two staircases allow a playfully loop of discovery through the store.

Furniture pieces are custom-designed by Casper Mueller Kneer and fine artist Michael Elmgreen and the store will also offer a dedicated space for curated video artwork.
Nothing in the space was standard but everthing is highly bespoke.
Making the metal screens was an interesting challenge. Here, we used a fabricator from the art world to get the level of detail, accuracy and ingenuity we were looking for.
Similarly, the flooring is a highly bespoke item. We designed the terrazzo and marble inlay pattern and worked with a highly specialised fabricator, controlling every step of the sampling, fabrication and installation very precisely.

The curved screen are devices that structure the space - they create two disctic rooms without enclosing these completely - but they also double up as display structures and background. You percieve two different colours when you move around them which is an effect we particuliarly enjoy and has to do with the rotaton of their elements.
The stacked coloums are a geometric play, something light hearted. We enjoy how the material softens these shapes.

There are tow aspects we hope people will take away from the experience of visiting the store -
Spatially the store is quite intimate.
Spatially - It was important for us that we would create a number of different places to explore within the store. Upstairs, the metal screens create a visual veil and structure the simple, open space, whilst downstairs we used a strong geometric language to create intimate, small niches to discover. There are two staircases which allow visitors to choose different routes through the store.

Materially - We often use strong materialities in our projects which we hope create a strong experience. In this case it is the use of a raw and soft material for the walls, and delicate, intricate onesfor the screens and floors, which in combination with the strong geometries create an unsual experience – bold and tender at the same time.

This store for Self-Portrait extends its already strong world-wide presence and offers a stand-alone identity for the first time.

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Project Data:
Location: Albemarle Street, London
Opened: March 2018
Area: 233m2
Casper Mueller Kneer Architects, London: Olaf Kneer, Marianne Mueller, Vicente Hernandez, George Barer, Vid Žnidaršič, Alice Evrard
Lighting Design: Lichtvision, London Berlin Hong Kong
Structural Engineer: TZG, London
Contractor: Lamberti Construction, London