Wai Think Tank have shared with us their proposal for the Fashion Museum Competition in Omotesando Street in Tokyo, Japan. The challenge consisted in designing a 100 meters high tower-museum, containing exhibition areas of 20th century fashion history and becoming a landmark for Tokyo.
See more images and architect’s description after the break.
A fashion Museum for the 21st century
Omotesando Street is recognised nowadays as a powerhouse in the world of fashion. Its particular urban fabric is famous for its conglomeration of iconic, although individual luxurious boutiques.
But how to insert a new building able to do both, act as a tribute to this urban context and represent fashion as displayed in Omotesando? How to make the fashion museum an extension of the city?
As a programmatic catalyst for its context, the fashion museum is envisioned as a vertical version of Omotesando Street; a Vertical Omotesando. In the 100 meter-high museum tower, the avenue is reinterpreted as a network of shuttling elevators, platforms, escalators and stairs that connect a series of horizontally projected volumes. Acting as floating boutiques, the enclosed nature of those spaces stimulate the environment of exclusivity typical of high fashion and design. In them the main programs are displayed; fashion galleries, administrative offices, a runway area and a skybar on the highest level.
While the programmatic volumes seem to float over a void , the remaining space reveals a series of circulation features that make the public interact with the Japanese gardens, and with the multiple wall projections that display fashion related shows and movies. One of the key features used to navigate through the building is an elevating platform or Moving Catwalk. The Moving Catwalk, and the other elements of circulation define an unconvential way to wander through the building without the predictable form of the museum experience. As in an urban context, the individuality of the visitor is highlited; in vertical Omotesando, the visitors can decide their own trajectory through all the building.
The moving catwalk receives the people in the main lobby and distributes them through the floating galleries, reaching on its last levels the runway and skybar which overlook the city .Throughout the exhibition spaces, the public acquires a protagonist role as the exhibitions become fully complete only when The Moving Catwalk levels off inside these spaces..
On the runway floor the moving catwalk becomes not only part of the seating area, but also acts as a visual connection with the backstage rooms of the runway, opening a domain of fashion usually inaccessible to visitors.
In Vertical Omotesando, by means of a circulation network connecting the floating programs a dynamic relationship between fashion and the public is created, enhancing even farther the participation of the visitors. In this fashion museum for the 21st century, the experience of the visitor moving through the building becomes the fashion show; a contemporary urban spectacle.
What a waste of space and resources… too many escalators, feels like an endless shopping mall.
^ ??? This is a fashion museum in Tokyo, not an office block in America. The whole premise of the fashion industry is to waste resources: what is in this spring is out next summer. Given that most people shop for fashion in shopping malls, the escalators are quite appropriate. Go back and have a look at the concept sketches again.
Good to see the 1980′s hasn’t been forgotten…
museum. Keyword.
As an architectural student currently working, I am sick of architects putting down fashion. It’s a completely legitimate form of design.
How can you effectively gage the current design conditions without looking at design through a range of fields,i.e. object design, architecture AND fashion?
A quick glance through the history books will quickly show that design movement are reflected in all three, and all three come together to define an era.
Just because one is more immediate than the others does not make it less valid.
When design fields overlap, this is often where some of the most spectacular design moments eventuate. Hedi Slimane’s interiors, Herzog &deMeuron for Prada, Junya Ishigami for Yohji Yamamoto in New York, the list continues.
Clearly these visionaries did not limit themselves to the single minded view that their own area of expertise was far superior than others, and their open minded efforts were rewarded by tremendous outcomes.
As an architectural student currently working
Cool! RT @archdaily: Vertical Omotesando / Wai Think Tank http://archdai.ly/awSck3
This surely has destroyed the streetscape of Omotesando.
i’m afraid this concept is rather applicable to ginza or even roppongi than omotesando. not questioning the architecture but its relation to the context.
at least they have tried to make some relation b/w horizontal Omotesando % vertical Omotesando…….rest-manageble.
actually, the competition brief here stated the building had to reach 100m be it total height, or with a spire.
Anybody can tell me, probably I’m wrong, but it loocks like Signal Tower architect Jean Nouvel. Please corect me if I’m wrong
..i have the same impression :)
tragically nouvel has dumped the plan for the signal tower
could not agree with kandinsky more
高さではスカツリーにはかないませんが、話題づくりでしたら表参道。Vertical Omotesando / Wai Think Tank http://www.archdaily.com/54335/vertical-omotesando-wai-think-tank/
Good clear concept. Nice linking/overlap of levels. Thats difficult to do in a tower, if they pull it off, kudos LOL.
Would have liked to see an escalator in a 3D view.
I don’t think most of the posters realize that this is just an entry in an “IDEAS COMPETITION”
初耳！でも注目ですな‼ RT @te2ji96: 表参道プラダの向かいでファッションミュージアムのコンペがあるらしい。これはそのうちの一案。 http://www.archdaily.com/54335/vertical-omotesando-wai-think-tank/
Vertical Omotesando /Wai Think Tank http://bit.ly/cWUqSn
RT @te2ji96: 表参道プラダの向かいでファッションミュージアムのコンペがあるらしい。これはそのうちの一案。 http://bit.ly/biWc6O
RT @j_inokuma: 初耳！でも注目ですな‼ RT @te2ji96: 表参道プラダの向かいでファッションミュージアムのコンペがあるらしい。これはそのうちの一案。 http://www.archdaily.com/54335/vertical-omotesando-wai-think-tank/
RT @j_inokuma: 初耳！でも注目ですな‼ RT @te2ji96: 表参道プラダの向かいでファッションミュージアムのコンペがあるらしい。これはそのうちの一案。 http://www.archdaily.com/54335/vertical-omotesando …
Mi fe en la humanidad me hace creer que un día veré algo así en México: http://www.archdaily.com/54335/vertical-omotesando-wai-think-tank/
Although it seems nice the designers thought of the site (the horizontal rows of buildings along Omotesando) in their design — by actually making it the design of the building, it leaves me wondering, is that it? Is there nothing more? Did they just rotate an existing set of structures and rotate it 90 degrees? If that’s all there is to their design, that’s pretty disappointing. So much more could have been made out of it. Perhaps highlighting the negative space between the buildings or doing something more than just concrete slabs of varying widths stacked upon each other.