Aesop Burnside II

The landscapes surrounding Adelaide could belong to different corners of the globe.

The landscapes surrounding Adelaide could belong to different corners of the globe. To the east, cool green hills; southward, a rocky coastline; west, the salt-edged sweep of Gulf St Vincent. This wild panorama is seen from a city laid out with studied precision: a grid of streets set down in 1837, punctuated by carefully drawn parks and geometric lakes—entirely artificial. While nature abounds beyond, within the city, humans have sought to imitate it.

This dialogue between the natural and the artificial resounds through our store at Burnside. It is built from hempcrete, a plant-based alternative to concrete. Hempcrete is a landscape in itself: a highly textural mixture of local golden earth, lime, and regionally grown hemp, that is dried once it has been cut into bricks.

At the store, those were placed within a vertical timber grid whose slats, hewn from the slender trunks of the abundant local blackbutt, create a framing rhythm within the space. Unlike inert concrete, the aspect of those blocks will evolve over time, while the latticed walls will seem to shift subtly with the light of Adelaide’s changing seasons. This ongoing conversation between raw materials and geometric patterns, initiated in-store, will continue outside—all around.