Toyo Ito

Located in the fashionable Omotesando area of Tokyo, this building was built especially for Tod's, an Italian shoe and handbag brand. The lower levels of this seven-story building are used as a shop, with the middle and upper levels containing offices and a multi-purpose space. Since the site is L-shaped and has a narrow frontage, in order to give the building a unified volume we enclosed the site with a wall that gives the impression of a row zelkova trees. This exterior surface serves as both graphic pattern and structural system, and is composed of 300mm-thick concrete and flush-mounted frameless glass. The resulting surface supports floor slabs spanning 10-15 meters without any internal columns. In relation to environment around the site in Omotesando, where many luxury brand boutiques have been built, by selecting concrete as a material we daringly proposed a substance and strength absent from the adjacent "glass architecture"... - Toyo Ito