Audemars Piguet Flagship Store
Time Piece
Image © Audemars Piguet. All rights reserved.
New York City, USA
Goppion famously designs and builds showcases for a wide variety of projects, and sometimes this includes commercial and retail environments, too. Between June 2021 and April 2022, we created a series of custom-made showcases for Audemars Piguet – a brand name synonymous with sophisticated, precision Swiss watchmaking since the 1870s.
The elegant new Audemars Piguet flagship store in New York City – the first of its kind in the USA – is designed by Bonetti/Kozerski Architecture D.P.C. Their carefully crafted experiential approach to retail incorporates elements of museum and library alongside luxury retail, lounge and dining spaces.
Goppion was appointed to create an extensive series of 67 showcases for the new store, combining the requirements of museum-grade display and retail experience. The results included 60 custom-designed wall vitrines installed in three grid systems, plus a single larger wall vitrine and six floor-standing hemisphere displays with a highly tuned color finish of gold.
Image © Audemars Piguet. All rights reserved.
Image © Audemars Piguet. All rights reserved.
The bespoke hemisphere showcases display the store’s collection of historic watches, housed in a dedicated ‘museum’ room. Each half-dome showcase contains displays of timepieces loaned on rotation from the Audemars Piguet museum in Le Brassus, Switzerland. Every watch on display serves as both a celebration of the brand’s heritage and, by extension, a demonstration of the world-famous horological traditions of the Vallée de Joux.
Proving that the brand combines tradition and innovation, an additional gallery space has been created to host the mirrored vitrines. Their contents display novel and current collection timepieces, including a selection of valuable Royal Oak 50th Anniversary references.
Security is a paramount consideration with such high-value objects. In these situations, Goppion utilizes state-of-the art security systems for maximum protection of the precious items.
In all, the project is a fine example of Goppion applying museum design principals to a high-end retail environment.