Unknown Works transforms a Victorian storehouse into Salt Salon Borough in London, where sound, sculpture and hairdressing fuse into a new kind of cultural interior.
Set inside a Victorian storehouse beside Borough Market, the project pushes beyond conventional salon design, reimagining grooming rituals through the lenses of acoustics, fabrication, and subcultural memory.
Spread across three levels, the building’s historic brick shell now accommodates a layered sonic environment. The ground-level ‘Listening Room’ is the heart of the space, lined with cutting stations and a reception-bar hybrid that mutates into a venue by night. At its centre, two monumental galvanised steel loudspeakers—digitally formed through low-energy roboforming techniques—stand like sculptural totems. These speakers, produced in collaboration with Friendly Pressure, draw directly on UK soundsystem culture, evoking both intimacy and collectivity.
This hybrid sensibility continues upstairs on the ‘Cutting Floor,’ where a single ribbon of stainless steel mirror arcs along the room, shifting in finish from hazy to sharp reflection. The effect is both functional and atmospheric, allowing privacy and precision to coexist. Suspended Friendly Pressure loudspeakers punctuate the mirrored plane, anchoring the space visually while calibrating its sound. Here, daily routines become heightened rituals, tuned to the choreography of scissors, reflection, and basslines.
On the top level, the ‘Colour Floor’ pushes material experimentation further. A half-tonne stainless steel mirror workstation is suspended from the original timber rafters, its sheer mass acting as both a sculptural centrepiece and an acoustic diffuser. Over time, the surface will absorb stains from dyes, embedding traces of process into its skin—an evolving patina of colour and care.
The architects’ attention to sonic architecture extends into the smallest details. Recycled foam chairs double as bass absorbers, silicone panels soften reverberation, and bio-resin lights capture the impressions of formed metal panels. Every surface negotiates reflection and absorption, transforming the salon into an instrument tuned to its own daily rhythms.
Salt Salon’s design ethos originates with founder John Paul Scott, a former electronic music producer who treats the salon not just as a space of service, but of sensory exchange. With its discreet street presence, Borough follows Dalston’s precedent—eschewing storefront spectacle for understated hospitality. Yet the interiors are anything but muted; they resound with the ambition to reimagine grooming as cultural practice, staging haircuts within the language of sound, sculpture, and performance.
