In line with Aesop’s customary architectural approach – to work with what is already in place, weaving a discreet presence into the fabric of the locale – fault lines and natural rifts within the area’s geological timeframe were key influences, expressed through a prominent raked wall of plastered texture and form. Bracing, stitching, and splicing the surface of the wall terrain, forty-one solid copper shelves bridge the in-between, bearing intended reference to the copper stills used to produce the whiskey in A.P Hotaling’s warehouse, once the West Coast’s largest whiskey repository.

This space is situated in one of a handful of structures that survived the 1906 earthquake and fire, owing to the quick-thinking firemen and hundreds of citizens determined to protect the stores of Hotaling’s Whiskey, an endeavor that fortuitously preserved the architecture of neighboring blocks.