took this picture during our trip to Tokyo November last year. The place is Omotesando, basically it's a must go if you are into architecture, design, or just brandnames as the long, slightly slanted street, flanked on both sides with trees, is lined with one after another designer built of flagship stores of various brands. this is becoming a phenomenon, not only in Japan, but starting to take roots in other major cities around the world.
the shop, TODS, an italian fashion brand, has employed the service of Japanese Architect Toyo Ito. The use of expressive, almost organic concrete structure, made this a very unique building in the district, and definitely one the most memorable. one can not help but correlate this piece of work with his earlier work on the Serpentine Pavilion at Hyde Park, London. his works were actually some of the first japanese architecture that i came to notice decades ago when there was an exhibition held in the London Natural History Museum at South Kensington almost 20 years ago, and i believed he worked on some of the installations then. want to talk more on this particular architect, but will have to wait till another post.
is there a system behind these seemingly organic concrete "trunks" and "branches"?
if the purpose is to make this stand out, it has already achieved its purpose, so does it matter?
however, the next question is, does it make you want to go inside the shop? and does the design and architecture helps to arouse your desire to consume? what is the relationship between: Brands, noise, marketing, design, architecture, finance, exposure, consumption, consumer behaviour, psychology, competition and all that???
Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa's Christian Dior shop is just a few steps away, will talk about it in the next post.
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