ToSummer Aromatherapy Experience The new oriental original aromatherapy brand "ToSummer" announces its first off-line flagship store, the "ToSummer living room", located on the ground floor of Taikoo Li North District, Sanlitun, Beijing. With its inviting combination of streamline and curved surfaces, the design transforms the 170m² space while leading visitors to naturally follow a circular flow. With the extensive use of mirror effects combined with light, materials and color to enhance the ambience of the space, visitors stop and linger to savor the experience. This is exactly the "living room" atmosphere that the owners sought to create – to inspire an emotional feeling between residential and social, communication and comfort. Through spatial language, material texture and detailed narration, the project also sets up several groups of clear "opposites": warmth and calmness, coarseness and delicacy, hardness and softness, control and intuition, natural and fabricated. Through the spatial design, these "opposites" create smooth "dialogues". As the exclusive space of this aromatherapy brand, "ToSummer living room" in Sanlitun, Beijing, expresses the brand identity through the characteristics of "amorphous" and "freedom" utilizing visual and tactile feelings to trigger and extend visitors' imagination through olfactory perception. Searching for fragrance. The brand's concrete requirement for this space design was a "Modern Cave". The designer chose not to directly create the natural appearance of caves but, instead, presents the characteristic elements of material textures to inspire the sensory experience. It transforms the original cave concept into spatial language, integrating it into this realistic space full of modern Oriental feeling to present a delicate balance between business and art, "home" and public space, natural and fabricated. In contrast to the straightforward window and entryway of standard commercial storefronts, this experience space offers a facade of coarse gray-toned imitation-stone. The floor at the entrance is raised and retreats inward while the lighting within is soft and subdued, forming a significant alternative to the noisy, fast and bright shopping mall spatial experience. The irregular-appearing interior space has been intricately designed and adjusted. It is naturally divided by a "metal screen" at the entrance and along a central island into the "living room" experience area in the front, the exhibition and retail area in the middle, an independent art installation space, and the cashier area in the back. In their midst, the mirrored metal screen at the entrance echoes the curved wall and streamlined mirror, so that the "living room" is naturally divided into several small interconnected blocks which perform their own functions. The designer incorporated flexibility to enlarge the spaces to respond to different exhibition forms. While the exhibition area is composed of shelves and a central island platform comprising a mere 25 m², it reflects the efficiency with which the space was designed. The direct "intertextuality" of the metal island platform, shelves and curved wall presents the products like works of art, achieving a powerful brand memory imprint. The whole indoor traffic line is connected through a U-shaped channel. When entering, the visitors’ flow is naturally streamlined through the spatial design, decoration and mirror scenery, forming a positive and negative effect like a camera lens, however, the space offers viewers a sense of security. Aroma “living room”. As the exclusive space of an aromatherapy brand, its exploration into using vision to mobilize the sense of smell is one of the key points of the design. "Infinity" and "freedom" become the two breakthrough points for designers to develop Synaesthesia, which involves mingling the five senses, such as causing visual elements to evoke a smell sensation. It is as if the scent becomes visible and palpable through use of free and flowing characteristics. The design vocabulary of "amorphous" is mainly reflected in the use of streamlined and curved surfaces. This dynamic sense and mobility of visual effect, on the one hand, infuses vitality into the pure underground indoor space, while on the other hand, it also embodies the spatial state of "cave", adding an ambiguous sensation of space between "obvious" and "hidden". "Freedom" is main feature within the "living room" Which has been expressed in a sustainable way. The space is designed for longevity and flexibility. Within the space, all furniture can be re arranged to adapt to various type of events and needs. This not only reduce the needs of furniture and materials in the space, but also make the space itself more flexible, reducing the discarding any materials while at the same time expend the possibility of space. As the selection of furniture, the designer was inspired when he selected collectible furniture of British Artist Max Lamb. Through using the traditional elements of the living room, such as sofa, chair and coffee table, the designer formed a flexible "living room" space. Meanwhile, natural materials were incorporate in the construction. The paint for the warm badged coloured walls contains re-used straw as part of the base. This bring back a feeling of natural, at the same time the smell of the straw contribute to the aroma of the space. Sit in comparison of the polished screen and the use of other materials, create a "primitive" and "unfinished" state, and achieved a harmonious coexistence of "natural and fabricated in a prudent manner. In terms of colors, in addition to the calm temperament of mirrored metal, the solid-color white tone wall base gives the whole space a pure and soft background and, through the interaction of light, shadow and mirror image, it forms a "broad" open space feeling. The rough imitation-stone material and algae mud with full texture together with mirrored metal once again play the theme of "natural and fabricated". In terms of lighting design, the designer displays a soothing and high-level spatial atmosphere with focus and theme through spotlights, mirror lights, light belts and other forms. Combined with the reflection of light by mirror and metal materials, the designer uses halo and shadow to reproduce several sets of "dialogues". Together with the fragrances in the space, it enables people to open their bodily senses and more intimately perceive smell, light and time. Energy consumption level is another important aspect in the consideration of the lighting design. All the lightings used in space are LED light for the reason of low energy consumption. Also LED light create less heat, this will not create to many heat within the space, also create less disturbance for the costumers. The used of lighter colour for the space also helps to reduce the use of light within the space. Aroma Gallery. Beyond the concepts of natural and fabricated, another important proposition that the design team constantly establishes and solves is the balance between commercial and art spaces. The design attracts customers into the space through implicitly penetrating the interfaces. This kind of exploratory space draws inspiration from museums, art installations and other cultural buildings. And here, it is intended to enhance the artistic connotation of this commercial space, not only to make the space itself have artistic temperament, but also to allow the fragrance products displayed to be enjoyed and gazed upon like "works of art". Each of the smaller interconnected segments of the space comprises a different "scene". Through the use of mirrors, these various scenes reflected in these mirrors also constitute an interesting level of "play-within-a-play", making everyone become elements in each other's scenery.