_{Image courtesy of Prada}

PRADA Epicenter Tokyo
Location:  Aoyama district

Almost concurrently with the opening of the New York Epicenter, Prada embarked on its second in Tokyo with the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. The six-story stand-alone building, situated in the Aoyama district, is one of the most distinctive works of architecture in Tokyo.
               

_{Image courtesy of Prada}

           

The green glass façade bulges from a diagonal grid that forms its structural skin. Inside the building houses retail floors, lounges, and event spaces.

Prada Aoyama Tokyo is the first building by Herzog & de Meuron in which the structure, space, and façade form a single unit. The vertical cores, the horizontal tubes, the floor slabs, and the façade grilles define the space but at the same time provide the structure and the façade.        

_{Image courtesy of Prada}

                          

This means that every single visible part of the building (except for the glass) operates as structure, space, and façade all at the same time. The façade is conceived as a porous spatial structure: one could almost say the building does not even have a façade. Its glazing is only an external shell, comparable to a contact lens resting on the pupil of an eye. Like contact lenses the façade’s glazing of the building is merely here to enhance and focus optical processes.

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