SODA Architects Designs a Fragrance Art Gallery for Vivinevo in Beijing

“What would it feel like to step into a drop of perfume?” questions Yuan Jiang, cofounder of Beijing firm SODA Architects. For the synesthetes among us, the answer may already be apparent. Others, though, might consider a trip to perfume brand Vivinevo’s 3,400-square-foot “fragrance art gallery”—a multisensory playground that showcases perfume products via immersive installations, which Jiang and cofounder Chen Song were entrusted with designing last year.

The scene is initially set at the Beijing storefront’s recessed entrance, where 5,000 illuminated perfume bottles line the walls in a grand and prismatic welcome. Passing into the main hall, guests are greeted by a billowing gypsum wall displaying moving graphics that reference the flow of liquid perfume within its container. In front of the wall, a display table is lined with actual fragrances that visitors can test while enjoying the visuals. Similar exhibits can be found in slightly smaller, but equally absorbing, galleries toward the back of the store.

One room spotlights Vivinevo’s Master series of fragrances with a shimmering 200-square-foot display shelf, opposite which a series of LED lightboxes sport portraits of professional perfumers like Maurice Roucel and Yann Vasnier, who collaborated on the line. Overhead, a mirrored ceiling gives the shelf the appearance of stretching another dozen feet high.

After circulating through these various galleries, guests can stop at what SODA calls the “participatory perfume modulation and consumption area.” Here, in perhaps the most immersive space of all, guests can combine an array of fragrances into their own custom perfumes.