Where the money is made.
Herzog and De Meuron's Prada creation. a home for all Japanese Belinda's to buy their "glittering spoils".
"Herzog comments on the rarity of this locally: “Tokyo is a city where not a single building relates to its neighborhood, and every building fills its whole site"
In the small amount of Tokyo architecture I've seen this rings true (elliptical house, Architecture Now 3!). It produces funny but receptive buildings that properly adapt to the environment. However here, the store has been given an outside area and made an unsual connection with the existing urban environment, something Japanese architecture normally does not depict.
Jacques Herzog describes these glass panes as “an interactive optical device. Because some of the glass is curved, it seems to move as you walk around it. That creates awareness of both the merchandise and the city—there's an intense dialogue between actors. Also, the grid brings a human scale to the architecture, like display windows. It's almost old-fashioned.”
