Acne Store Dover Street Mayfair, London
Acne Store Dover Street Mayfair, London
The Acne Store on Dover Street is the Swedish fashion brand’s first UK store. Opened in 2010, Gort Scott's project for Acne provides four floors of connected contemporary retail space within a five storey building.
2008–2010
Client: Acne
Project Status: Completed
Budget: £1.3m
The existing building, at 13 Dover Street, was a Georgian townhouse in the Mayfair Conservation Area. The primary challenge was to reconfigure a complex, compartmentalised building into a single retail space across all floors.
To achieve this, planning permission to change the building’s use to entirely retail was secured, along with a design that involved a complete re-construction of the building, retaining parts of the facades and excavating the basement. The scheme adds considerably to the overall volume with an additional storey and a substantial extension to the rear.
The interior retains a sense of the original proportions, but simplifies the layout, and opens it up to allow free movement over all floors, with no dividing doors, whilst seamlessly dealing with onerous fire and access regulations of the tall narrow site. At the previously gloomy rear of the building a Douglas Fir staircase is illuminated by natural light spilling in from the new roof garden above.
