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Located in the fashionable Aoyama district of Tokyo, Prada’s Tokyo becomes a landmark attraction due to its visibility. Designed by the Swiss architecture team of Herzog & de Meuron, this is a strikingly unconventional 6-story high glass crystal store. Amidst this beautiful symphony of mass and void spaces, the 5-sided polyhedral Prada Aoyama is as decorative as it is architectural and is both metaphorically and literally linked to its surrounding environment.

Freeing part of the land, the designers created an intimate plaza which serves as a meeting point and a precious relief in the totally built-up area in the surrounding. Constructed in 2003, this is the company’s second radical approach to fashion-store architecture, following Rem Koolhaas’ flagship store in New York.  This is a result of its five-sided shape, the smooth curves throughout its interior, and its signature diamond-shaped glass panes, which vary between flat, concave and convex “bubbles”. The facade comprises of a diamond-shape grid filled with hundreds of glass panels in 4 different types. Because some of the glass is curved, it seems to move as you walk around it. Herzog comments: “Tokyo is a city where not a single building relates to its neighborhood, and every building fills its whole site. We took a chance in creating a little space outdoors, like in European cities. We also reversed the typical Japanese emphasis on looking inward by giving importance to the view”.