Four Pillars’ inaugural retail offering anchors its multi-space Surry Hills venue with a main bar and gin laboratory where distilling and stillage masterclasses plus cocktail-making lessons occur. Presenting as a sensorial environment to smell, see, taste and touch, the interior design embraces natural materials and utilising a condensed palette and feature timber elements, the space warmly resonates with solid elegance.

Four Pillars Store reflects the natural botanical ingredients used in the product via tactile touchpoints and warm tones. It is located in a two-storey, freestanding chocolate brick building along a busy inner-city street. The façade is an expansive wall of glass framed within curved black steel returns and, although modest in floor size, the 25 square metre interior presents as a sculpted form.

Great attention was given to the custom solid timber joinery where red cedar and Cambia ash have been used, selected for their structural stability and resistance to warping and cupping, to articulate 3.3 metre high display shelving with storage cases beneath. The rounded profile complements the curved edges of the central point of sale (POS), encouraging circular navigation and preventing bottlenecks during busy periods.

A suspended timber halo conceals track lighting and highlights the Gin Lab’s open loft wall where a copper still produces small gin batches. Micro-cement rendered walls and floors with Pandomo finishes add brushed velvet warmth and emulate the brand’s copper-toned logo.

The new premise has a cosy almost domestic setting, thanks to its autumnal palette and the POS presents more as a dining table with its integrated lamp illuminating one corner. The POS is a flexible piece of design comprising two pieces and as well as the focus for business can also be dismantled to make space for product installations for evening events outside of retail hours when required.

Furniture: Custom designed by YSG. Finishes: Cork from Portugal Cork, Floors and walls by Concreative. Fittings & Fixtures: Door hardware custom designed by YSG.

Photography: Anson Smart