Avgvst’s Industrial Dark Kitchen (but It’s “Cooking” Jewelry)

From the outside, the shop looks like a kitchen, with a gray facade that blends into the surroundings. Through the glass window, one can see that the interior is filled with stainless steel kitchen furniture such as tables, stoves, cabinets, sinks, etc. as if it were a dark kitchen that only operates for delivery and takeaway orders. Again, the store looks “just ordinary,” which is exactly the goal!

The exterior (cr: Benoit Florençon)

Dark kitchen concept (cr: Benoit Florençon)

Avgvst Jewelry’s flagship store—featuring retail space, a tattoo studio, and a secret garden—in Berlin was designed by Crosby Studios, the two have collaborated several times before. They started the project by seeing it as a nomadic shop built from scratch, a shop that comes from a makeshift situation and has the possibility of moving at a later time. Therefore, the “upcycling” philosophy was naturally applied: office blinds are reused as wall finishing material, for example.

The tattoo studio (cr: Benoit Florençon)

Office blinds reused as wall finishing (cr: Benoit Florençon)

In addition, the shop is also dominated by ready-made furniture instead of fixed marble and stone blocks so that they can be easily moved if necessary. There are other off-the-shelf furniture, such as foldable camping chairs, small round tables, etc. to replace the typical permanent arrangement of an outlet.

Ready-made furniture (cr: Benoit Florençon)

Industrial interior (cr: Benoit Florençon)

Even though it was intentionally designed to be “unremarkable” from the outside, that does not mean the store is not attractive, especially if one’s eye catches the striking yellow accent inside. The sunny yellow color is the brand’s signature that was already being applied to their store in Moscow, where many visitors shared photos of the yellow interior on Instagram. The color was originally determined by “accident;” Natasha Bryantseva—founder of Avgvst—brought a yellow notebook to her first meeting with Harry Nuriev—founder of Crosby Studios. Since the brand wanted to create a less luxurious image in its jewelry outlets, and since yellow is the color of gold, they agreed that it was indeed the perfect color.

A yellow sink (cr: Benoit Florençon)

Jewelry on top of the stoves and cabinets (cr: Benoit Florençon)

With the tagline “Jewelry for those who do not wear jewelry,” industrial style seems to be the right approach to selling diamonds and gold without being overly exclusive. However, the industrial kitchen concept is not only for the sake of visual reasons; it also answers the need for display tables with lots of drawers—a function that kitchen equipment can accommodate.