Balenciaga’s Raw Architecture concept has arrived on London’s New Bond Street

Fashion house Balenciaga has opened an artfully deconstructed new store in London, using concrete, metal and glass to create an industrial backdrop.

Berlin studio Sub led the interior design, which follows in the footsteps of the label’s similarly austere Berlin store. It’s part of Balenciaga’s Raw Architecture concept, which sees retail spaces stripped back to the extreme, designed to be closer to construction sites and abandoned spaces.

This New Bond Street store occupies three levels, set behind a stainless steel entranceway. It might appear weathered, but the cracked floor and rusty beams are the results of careful artifice. And what appears to be thick concrete slabs are actually little more than a veneer – chosen when the studio discovered the building couldn’t support the amount of concrete they wanted to add.

Cutaways reveal the structure of the building, while the pre-existing lift shaft has been entombed in glass. There’s even artificial dirt scattered beneath the shelving.