1855 The Bottle Shop is Singapore’s leading specialist wine and spirit retailer, a place crafted for wine and spirit enthusiasts from novices to oenophiles. With this shop at Marina Bay Sands being its flagship store, the clients wanted an elevated retail experience from all their other outlets.
The inspiration comes from taking a page out of the books from old European libraries and underground cellars. We took this opportunity to reinvent impressions of a bottle shop and relook the browsing experience. Using fins and arches, symmetry and proportions, we created a unique and dynamic arc shape that subtly divides the areas, wine on shelves spreading upward all the way, like a super city wall built with historical (wine) culture. Bottles are artistically arranged both horizontally and vertically, from floor to ceiling with display and storage seamlessly integrated as one. Certain selections are suspended on brass racks and sit atop pedestals, while standalone cylindrical capsules showcase special items. Just like rare collections in a library or museum, we wanted to confer the bottles the same status.
The carefully chosen materials magnify the experiential qualities of their store. Drawing upon the similarities between wine and patina— how they both get better with age— we applied a rust-like patina texture to the fins and arches. This aged texture is complemented by notes of black from the black granite flooring and cellar room. Orinoco Granite was used for the flooring alluding to antique cellars and mirrors are used in the private walk in chiller to generate amplitude and an atmospheric world of reflections, visually expanding spatial impressions creating an open and high feeling.
Unlike most retail stores, we removed the window display and kept the shopfront completely unobstructed for a full view of what we’ve created within. Allowing the natural light to filter into the store and also vice versa have the store’s illumination filter outwards. With this we hope to encourage regular patrons and new guests alike to step through the portal and lose themselves in the world of wine discovery.