Designed by MUS Architects, their proposal for the Tokyo Fashion Museum was recently named the winner of the World Architecture Awards 20+10+X. The whole structure of the building, from the entry yard to the top of the tower has been wound with a homogenic lether relating to the basic fabric of every fashion designer and constituting the base of every collection. Fibers of the fashion museum are lead in two rows – one layer of fiber winds around the building clockwise, the other one counter-closkwise thus resulting in a kind of a plaiting. Due to the small dimensions of the parcel being located in the intensely urbanized city tissue of Tokyo, the wide program of the fashion museum has been set up vertically on 22 levels (19 of which above the ground level). The result is a functional ‘pile’ of layers – ‘program squares’. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The tissue of the plot has been treated as an elastic fabric, which can be stretched, pulled upwards and twisted so as to form the desired shape, based on the design-program analysis. A function of a museum is commonly associated with buildings with a wide, horizontal program-spatial layout. They tend to be objects which are exposition ’packagings’, places of an individual contemplation, but also areas for meetings, drawing society into their world.
