Following on from Form Follows Formulation — Aesop was granted this unique location in the heart of London just as Salone del Mobile 2024 was wrapping up. The store design team was dismounting an installation by Nicolas Schuybroek—Form Follows Formulation—which had inhabited Aesop’s Piazza Cordusio store in Milan for the duration of the design week. Inspired by the Arte Povera movement from the late 60s and 70s, and echoing Superstudio’s contemporaneous monochromatic grid structures, Schuybroek had taken one of the most fundamental, functional household items—a bar of soap—to create an unconventional sculpture. Slabs of Aesop soap appeared to hover, en masse, in grid formation, supported by a slender timber structure that could be readily disassembled and reused in different locations. The Knightsbridge lease, fortuitously, presented an opportunity for the almost immediate re-deployment of this striking assembly.
