Miu Miu Aoyama Store / Herzog & de Meuron

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Text description provided by the architects. The project for Miu Miu is sited diagonally across the street from the celebrated Prada Tokyo Epicenter – also designed by Herzog & de Meuron – in an elegant neighborhood that has, over the past two decades, become a showplace of architectural invention. In contrast to the transparency of the all-glass Prada building, however, the understated metallic surface of the Miu Miu façade is opaque, which lends a more intimate quality. The architects say: “Contrary to expectations for a site that is home to so many luxury brands, Miyuki Street in Aoyama Tokyo is not particularly beautiful or elegant. The architecture is heterogeneous – a hodgepodge of freestanding buildings of different heights and shapes, with neither historical tradition nor common standards. Never meant to be a space of its own, the street is a purely technical and functional link between Omotesando and the Aoyama Reien cemetery farther down the road. Despite single trees here and there, the atmosphere is not inviting, like a boulevard or a plaza. Tokyo is pure, quintessential city, its territory exploited to the full with absolutely no leeway for the individuality that we take for granted in European cities.