Fifteen years right after Miuccia Prada commissioned Herzog & de Meuron to design Prada’s Tokyo flagship, the Swiss architecture studio has finished an “understated” box-like store for her brand Miu Miu across the street .
Herzog & de Meuron designed the 720-metre-square developing on Miyuki Street in Tokyo’s Aoyama District, shut to the famous Omotesando Street that is home to a string of luxury vogue retailers designed by renowned architects.
“Contrary to expectations for a website that is house to so a lot of luxury brands, Miyuki Street in Aoyama Tokyo is not especially gorgeous or stylish,” explained the architects. “The architecture is heterogeneous – a hodgepodge of freestanding buildings of diverse heights and shapes, with neither historical tradition nor common specifications.”
Zoning laws stipulated a short framework, so the architects decided to generate a small opaque box-like construction that would contrast with the architects’ seminal all-glass shop for Prada – the Italian style residence that owns Miu Miu.
The steel facade of the two-storey Miu Miu creating is angled away from the glass wall beneath “as if the volume had been sliced open with a massive knife”, to allow glimpses of the interior to passers-by.
The other side of the sharp-edged steel sheeting is clad with textured copper that curves at the corners.
Consumers enter beneath the steel canopy into the reduce level of the shop, which the architects meant to appear far more like a “spacious and cozy house” than a retail room.
“We utilised the following ideas to channel our ideas: far more like a house than a division retailer, more hidden than open, much more understated than extravagant, more opaque than transparent,” explained Herzog & de Meuron.
Yet another angled copper wall is utilized on the opposite side of the shop, extending the full height of the developing and offering a backdrop for displayed equipment.
A single-flight staircase orientated parallel to the principal facade features glass banisters topped with copper rails.
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Other inner walls are covered with a brocade material produced in subtly various shades of green.
The pattern is also utilised to upholster the rounded seats and stools found all around the interior, in each green and a contrasting brilliant red hue that covers shelves.
Branded with Miuccia Prada’s nickname, Miu Miu was set up in 1993 as a platform for the vogue designer’s explorations past her Prada line.
Herzog & de Meuron completed the all-glass Prada Aoyama keep 12 many years ago and the developing has because grow to be a common tourist destination.
“At that time, we were interested in counteracting the circumstance – on one particular hand, by placing a modest plaza to the side of the building, and on the other, by producing the structure entirely see-by means of so that a single can see into the interior from all sides and can also appear out from inside at exclusively targeted views of the city,” stated the architects.
The Prada group was keen to spot the new Miu Miu keep in the exact same vicinity, close to other substantial-profile style-architecture collaborations that incorporate buildings for Dior by SANAA, Coach by OMA, and Tod’s by Toyo Ito.
