Aesop Capitol Hill | Atelier Carle (Alain Carle Architecte)

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AESOP SEATTLE


Intoduction


We consider that Aesop has a unique and critical vision of développement.  The idea to celebrate the streetscape and local identity of every new venues of the brand redefines what a international brand usually seeks for : Uniformity, standardization. In a way, although this is probably a new way of « beeing global », regional specificity has become a new way to refine the generic activity of shopping as a « comprehensive » and somehow cultural act.


Seattle views


The American West Coast has somehow a spectacular and contradictory cultural of development. On one hand, the geography has had a monumental presence to the point that large portion of the land has been devoted to parks. Yosemite, Point Reyes, Redwood National Park are all among a group of natural « monuments » that form the collective identity. On another hand, modern urban growth, typical of all North American cities, has had a tendency to develop a generic mode of construction, still caracteristic today. As oposed to an organic and uncomprehesive urban system has was the early european cities, the early settlers applied more modern techniques of land partitionning that led to the use of the urban grid as means of economic and territorial development.


Seattle is a fascinating example of these antagonists. The specific geographical conditions of this earlier Squamish settlement, set on the shore of the Puget Sound estuarine, offered a protected and secluded environment that allow the settlers to have a visual control of the incoming ships.  While the Squamish community had lived and developped in a sort of « dialogue » with the existing components of the landscape for numerous years, the colonistic approach was quite different. In the early representations of the city, around 1878, it is clear that the duel between nature and « culture » was going to define the urban development of the city : large areas near the shore show a massive tree cutting to house the new urban grid. In a way, one can trace a direct link between the construction of city grids between and cultural identity…


And it is for us a quintessential component of our architectural work, set in a metaphorical narrative that seeks to express critical issues embeded in any construct, even at the smallest scales.


In a way, we can say that the actual plan of Seattle is a « collection » of different grids that, threw time, was molded and adapted to the different site conditions. If the early development has followed a co-centrical layout from the natural shore of Puget Sound, the later designs, more inland, became much more abstract by the adoption of a systematic « north/south » arrangement. The interesting aspect of this phenomenon is not the fact that the landscape became less relevant once inland but rather because the means of development had radically change by then.


Seattle’s Great Fire of 1889 was one af the most dramatic event of the city that defined the shape of the actual city as it can be understood today. The aftermath of this event , where a tremendous collective effort was undertaken in order to rebuilt the city that had been wiped out by the fire in its core economical district (port, central market, financial distrcic were all burnt down, paralising the economics of the city), is of interest for us.


In a way, we use this particular collective event of a specific society to express a generic and maybe universal attitude toward nature. We use the principle of the « metaphor » to develop the key components of the conceptual narrative of our proposal for the new Aesop Capitol Hill store.


The reconstruction of the city cannot be understood without the synchronic edification of the city grid. The event of this sudden « wipe out » of the city in 1889 led to a new opportunity of planning. The previous constraints of the territory led to the idea that the new streets of the city had to be rebuild in a more « effective » way. The city was getting more populated and means of communication and infrastructures had to be improved.


Engineers demonstrated, by different drawn sections of streets, the « horse power » necessities of displacement threw hills. This reality led to congestion and costs that jeopardized the fluidity and efficiency of the streets as an economical system. With this, a new invented « problem » was generated,  essentially provoqued by the sustained effort to « impose » a city grid on an exisitng landscape rather than a more organic and suttle geometry of streets.


The central area of Seattle, that had mostly been destroyed by the 1889 fire, was completely reshape by ajusting the slope of the city. Since the idea was to reach the coast line with a « softer » slope, portion of the area had to be elevated up to 10 feet higher than the existing ground. New streets were then built as urban « bridges » over the former ones, leaving below the ruins of the ancient city. This generated a « intermediate » space that is still present to this day. The former « ground floor » became new « bassement » floors while the second became the new ground floor… And in order the lower level accessible, the sidewalk were built using glass blocks, allowing natural light flow to these strange undergrounds.


Later in time, the inland began to be reshape sytematically. The application of the grid throughout the territory led to a somewhat surreal intervention of mankind to the landscape. Water was made to contribution : using a slucing technique, the land was « liquified » in order to be transported by conveyors to the port and then dumped into the ocean by boat.


This « transitional » state of the city, that lasted several decades, is stunning. One can see the paradoxal monumentality of the landscape and simultaneously the force of human nature obeying to an abstract parameter : that of installing a generic system of interaction within a city. The paradox goes futher, as one can think that the city has developed by « erosion » rather that densification… and that the water running though those pipes had a double function of announcing a new city soon to be built and the destruction of the pre-existing landscape.


This generated a peculiar relationship between existing housing structures, now on « higher grounds » than the new planned urban grid. If the central district was rebuilt « on top » of the ruins of the 1889 fire, portion of the city were also built « below » the existing structure. This is the case of the southern portion of Capitol Hill for example.


After a phase of slucing, remaning hills occupied by constructions were left until the moment where these could either be demolished or relocated. The ones that were allocated new lots were then place on stacks of crates and supported temporarly so that the grid could be implemented as planned.


Today, these images show the precarity of housing in the American city as no other representation can. If the foundation of a culture is symbolised by the « house », what is to say about these beautiful built structures, standing in mid-air and supported by a random wood structure? What is to say about perinity, if it’s not that

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    AESOP SEATTLE Intoduction We consider that Aesop has a unique and critical vision of développement.  The idea to celebrate the streetscape and local identity of every new venues of the brand redefines what a international brand usually seeks for : Uniformity, standardization. In a way, although this is probably a new way of « beeing global », regional specificity has become a new way to refine the generic activity of shopping as a...

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