DESIGN PRESCRIPTION

t i n g w o r d s b y

j u i b r o o k l i n

i m a g e s w a t e r f r o m b y d e s i g n

Stripped of all that might be expected of a traditional botanical pharmacy, Shuǐ Xiāng, or Aqua Health Clinic, dressed in turquoise and emitting a serene glow of chlorine blue, offers diagnoses for good health. Shuǐ Xiāng, a wellbeing concept store in Sanlitun, Beijing, that coalesces molecular treatments with traditional Chinese herb medicine, commissioned Taiwanese firm Waterfrom Design to translate its commercial ambition into spatial terms.

Until recently, traditional herbology had been considered synonymous with salubrity. Generations sought consultation in the pharmacy, wherein they were diagnosed and provided with prescriptions drawing upon an encyclopaedia of classic herbal medicine, now 17 centuries old – Shennuns Pen-tsar Ching. A typical prescription might comprise dehydrated berries, or the bark and roots of various plant species, with each herb withdrawn from an individual ceramic dish, or a drawer of exotic wood, set within a wall of rich-brown lacquered cabinetry. The herbs would be simmered, brewing them to form a warm coffee-like liquid to be ingested.

Developments in pharmaceuticals have meant that scented hardwood drawers are no longer required to protect the herbs from insects, nor to stabilise atmospheric fluctuations in temperature and moisture. As such, these relics of past herbal pharmacies are absent in the store, where materials such as concrete, copper, acrylic and glass line its interiors. Upon entry, visitors are received at a backlit acrylic-clad reception kiosk. The blue-painted planks of the lobby floor washed in dim, cool light.

Situated within a high-rise, and occupying a ground level commercial unit, the 280sq m store is segmented by sweeping, geometric partitions. Comprising five treatment zones, each is framed within a fragmentary volume, partial arches that appear as glitches within a larger complex – related yet disrupted. Unifying these distinct areas are an array of light boxes, each one a presentation case of mosses and herbs, laid like luminous memorials throughout the space, or a

Copper, concrete, acrylic and glass line the interior

Treatment zones are defined by partial arches

Lightboxes are used to display mosses as if in a museum

The orderly blue acrylic boxes are an echo of Damien Hirst’s Pharmacy

museum’s antique displays. The light that filters through the varied opacities of their screens imbues the store with a sense of depth that belies its physical limits.

While echoing qualities reminiscent of clinical and laboratory environments, the concept store simultaneously renders them with a palette that speaks of science fiction. Both the blue-hued acrylic boxes and the orderly herb specimens lend a touch of melancholic nostalgia. In the first treatment zone, positioned beneath a turquoise curved ceiling, traditional herb samples – each dehydrated and sealed within individual glass blocks – are stacked one on top of another in a manner evocative of the practices of taxidermy. The store percolates the idea of changing approaches towards notions of wellbeing, diagnosis and remedy. The materiality and aesthetics of the interior seemingly convey that traditional herbal treatment is, after all, a fading art, but one that it seeks to capture and preserve in perpetuity.

These spatial qualities and aesthetics encourage comparison with Damien Hirst’s Pharmacy at the Newport Gallery in London, and themes within Hirst’s artwork of taxonomic processes – the scientific objectivity with which his animal carcasses are suspended in baths of formaldehyde. Likewise, Exhibition of Frozen Time, the project name given by Waterfrom to the store design, recognises a resonance between the contemporary ‘cure’ and traditional remedies for human wellness, making apparent that the specific spatial qualities and materiality of the ‘pharmacy’ are inextricably woven with conceptualisations of welfare.

Perhaps by consciously fusing and withdrawing from associative spatial qualities of this kind, the designers share the utopian view that Hirst expressed in an interview with Stuart Morgan in 1995, when asked to elaborate on the ideas behind his work Pharmacy (1992):

“Confidence that drugs will cure everything. It’s like readymade. Put one on the wall and it looks confident.”