Joya Studio

The Brooklyn-based fragrance house Joya Studio approached Taylor and Miller Architecture and Design to design a retail space within the context of their existing candle production facility. Joya is a fragrance design studio with a 21-person team based in New York City, offering innovating perfumes, personal care and home ambiance under their own label, as well as engaging emerging and established artists and brands for unique, collaborative projects. In addition to creating a concept shop to display this collection; there was also a desire to create a space for workshops, classes with visiting perfumers and art installations. Taylor and Miller created a retail environment that is literally and figuratively suspended between the formality, cleanliness, and elegance of a retail space and the informality and grit of a highly active factory. This retail experience is meant to hover between the context of consumption and the context of production, two environments that are too often ripped apart for the sake of protecting the sanctity of the antiseptic and heavily branded retail store. The space is comprised of large floating steel and wood veneer surfaces suspended from the factory ceiling. None of the steel surfaces touch each other, meaning that while they define the retail space, the beautifully scented activities of the factory space permeate the retail experience. The retail sides of the floating surfaces are wrapped in an oak wood veneer while the factory side of the surfaces is left entirely bare. Therefore, the space of consumption and the space of production is separated by the thinnest of architectural elements; a single sheet of veneer and a single sheet of steel.