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Architect: Renzo Piano Building Workshop--Renzo Piano, partner in charge; Paul Vincent, associate in charge; Loc Couton (project manager); Giorgio Ducci, Pascal Hendier, Frank La Rivire, Christophe Kuntz, design team
Executive architect: Takenaka Design Department
Client: Hermes Japon
Consultants: Arup (structural, mechanical, seismic); Syllabus (cost control); Delphi (acoustics); Equipe Espace (landscaping); Philippe Almon Eclairagistes (lighting); Rena Dumas (interior design)
General contractor: Takenaka Corporation
Size: 6,000 square meters
Completion date: 2001
Sources
Facade fabrication: Schmidlin AG
Glass block: Vetroarredo
Furniture: SOGO (shops); Technics d'Agencement (office)
Recession or not, the streets of Tokyo are usually full of fashionable shoppers weighed down by shopping bags sporting the most luxurious names in European fashion. Hermes, the French fashion house known for patterned silk scarves and shiny H-shaped belt buckles, recently opened a flagship in Tokyo. The company hired the Paris office of Renzo Piano Building Workshop to create an elegant building to stake out its identity among the garish neon- and billboard-covered sliver buildings of Tokyo's Ginza district.
Program
Maison Hermes, as the new store is called, consolidates the label's corporate and retail operations into a single signature building at the corner of Harumi Dori and Sony Dori in the heart of Ginza. The slender site measures just 12 meters wide by 45 meters long. Inside the 6,000-square-meter building are five levels of shopping (one below grade, four above); one floor devoted to a design atelier; two floors of offices; a mini museum...