Header: Gerry O’Leary
Sartoro Genève has recently unveiled its newest boutique at Solitaire Mall, marking an exciting new phase in its brand identity and store design. The interiors were designed to reflect the Maison’s dedication to their craft, ensuring every curve and contour defines the brand’s identity.
Designed by internationally acclaimed architecture studio Aranda\Lasch, the store evolves the two-dimensional curved corners and soft edges that have defined the brand’s identity into three-dimensional elements that engage and orchestrate light through a careful mix of shape, texture and materials.
Defining space with curved structures and light
The boutique spaces are partitioned and organised by gently curving walls and display elements. Vertical lines of light spring from the gaps between surfaces, illuminating their curving faces and subtly lighting the space. The play of textures and materials, from reflective metal and painted matte surfaces to richly textured carved stone, heightens the dramatic play of light across the space.
From the entrance, where these curved glowing surfaces are made from Botticino Classico marble, to the interior, where they are rose gold, visitors encounter a rhythm of vertical light coves that undulate from the facade to the main floor to each speciality room, guiding the store experience.
This language of moulded mass and light is drawn throughout the project. Walls flare out, capturing display cases, furniture, shelving units and pocket doors. The ceiling peels away to reveal deeper coves awash in light. The resultant boutique is a modern interpretation of Baroque space planning, where the poche (the solid mass between the rooms) shapes the character, ambiance and functionality of each room.
Experience through colour and texture
Sartoro Genève and Aranda\Lasch paid extra attention to detail when it came to materials. Botticino marble sculpted in Italy transitions into wine-purple and cherry red wallcoverings, Venetian plaster and rose gold metal panels. Backlit onyx adorns bookshelves and display tables. The radiant “S” symbol of the brand logo is integrated into glass partitions and pocket doors.
Each room has a unique theme that speaks to different elements of the brand identity and is expressed through material and colour. This transition of materials mediates the customer’s journey into the store from the more public areas into rooms where clients can experience more personalised attention.
“At Aranda\Lasch, we combine sculptural precision with timeless materials to create elegant, dynamic spaces. Sartoro Genève’s new boutique design reflects the same commitment to craft and innovation one sees in their bespoke jewellery creations. Through careful attention to detail, texture, and material, both Sartoro’s glittering collections and the architecture come alive through light.”
Joaquin Bonifaz, Aranda\Lasch
With structure and light playing such central roles in the definition of the spaces, material and texture become key elements in the experiential quality of the boutique. Corrugation, scalloping and changes in material after every curve disrupt the dominance of any single material and challenge the initial reading of the space as a single mass.
This flickering effect (reading the space as both a collection of curved surfaces and a single carved volume) is the heart of the design philosophy Aranda\Lasch and Sartoro Genève have crafted together for the first of many boutiques to come.
