In 1999 Prada launched a strategy to transform shopping into a completely new experience. Central to the strategy are buildings by modern, pioneering architects. Prada Tokyo ‘epicenter’ in Aoyama district (an area known for both couture and street fashion) is the company’s second radical approach to fashion-store architecture, following Rem Koolhaas’ flagship store in New York. The intent is “to reshape both the concept and function of shopping, pleasure and communication, to encourage the meshing of consumption and culture”.

Prada Tokyo is an exotic prism in chaotic Tokyo landscape. Shopping is a diffuse, hybrid experience in which retail and culture fuse in a building with a kaleidoscopic structure. Herzog decided early on to focus on vertical volume containing the maximum permitted gross floor area so that part of the lot acreage can remain undeveloped. This area will form a kind of plaza, comparable to the public spaces of a European city. In a usual approach to the typically small Tokyo site, the architects stacked the 6-storey shop and office accommodation into a five-sided block in order to create a small piazza which is enclosed by an angular wall covered in soft green moss.

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