Prada Aoyama Epicenter by Herzog & de Meuron

Since 1999, Prada brand taken the challenge of employing of selecting star architects of the very avant-garde of today such as Rem Koolhaas, Kazuyo Sejima, and Herzog & de Meuron for the design their new stores and expand its dominions, reinventing the experience of shopping, so Tokyo could not be less, and its location in Harajuku could not be better, an area famous for both its couture and street fashion.

Its appearance at first glance arbitrary of capricious, it is not, for it is dictated by the complex zoning and planning laws and regulation of the Tokyo government, shaping this eroded outcome. The shadow diagram was for example very important in the final resolution.

The architects decided earlier in the projects to focus on the vertical volume containing the maximum gross floor area and so permitting part of the lot acreage could remain undeveloped. The reason to do that was to create a sort plaza in the site similar to public spaces in European cities.

This building has an ambivalent character due to its irregular prismatic shape. Its façade has a rhomboid-shape grid structure which is clad in all its sides with a combination of glass panels in convex, concave or flat pieces. The employment of these surfaces generates an optical illusion reflecting the building inside and its products and the city reflections, in a kind of cinematographic effect.   

However the gird on the façade is no mere illusion but part of the structure linked to the vertical cores of the building and supporting the ceilings. There are horizontal stiffening tubes which make the structure stronger. These also create privacy areas such in the changing rooms.

The material used inside the building, resin, silicon and fibreglass creates a futuristic look contrasting with more organic products such as leather or wood, this is employed to help prevent fixed stylistic classifications of the site, so in that way new and classical products could be mixed.

Location:

35°39'49.51" N

139°42'51.71" E

Building Data:

Site Area: 953 qm 

Building Footprint: 369 sqm 

Gross Floor Area: 2,860 sqm 

Building Dimensions: Length 20 m, Width 22 m, Height 32 m 

Construction 2003

Cultural Complex in Castilblanco de Los Arroyos, Miguel Fisac

Cultural Complex in Castilblanco de Los Arroyos, Miguel Fisac.

This is the last project of Miguel Fisac, who died in 2,006, at the age of 93, who we could say that died with his boots on. This complex is located in the Sevillian town of Castilblanco de Los Arroyos, in the Silver Route, next to the North Range of Seville, and that is has just about 5,000 inhabitants.

Prior to this Cultural Complex Miguel Fisac only realized two projects for the province of Seville, one The Institute in The Maria Luisa Park dating of 1960 but never built and the other one was the Stella Maris Building of the Apostolate of The Sea of 1965.

The building in Castilblanco is located in the urban centre of the town, the site is flanked by housing blocks with a maximum two stories high and which have exterior white painted walls, interestingly one these block to the North look like an influence on this project because of its typology given the square volumes and textures which gives it a particular aspect.

It is the integration in the site area what Fisac seems to be looking for, respecting and assuming the urban context of the surrounds even though of the great volume of his building, being achieved this because of typological similarities and the language of the textures.

The external walls were realised with white concrete panels cast in situ and handmade, the building can be framed in the era of experimentation with this material that he stars from de decade of 1969’s. Fisac shows us concrete as a “soft material” and patenting the so called flexible formwork which he applies to external walls from polystyrene and resulting in elastic textures, polished and soft.

Fisac has being in a constant renovation that lead him to experiment endlessly with building materials, he was National Gold Medal of Architecture in 1994 and member of a talented generation of Spanish architects such are Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza, Antonio Fernández Alba, Daniel Fullaondo, Fernando Higueras Díaz, the first Ricardo Bofill, and where we could include Rafael Moneo being quite young at the time. 

The Plant of the complex its developed from square volumes intersected between them in an irregular shape, being the most ample area volume and height that corresponding to the Theatre-Auditorium, in contraposition that with less height and more humane then is that which is destine to the library and administrative section.

Blind walls are predominant and that is evident in the part corresponding to the theatre but there are also significant opening areas dedicated to illumination especially to the library zone in the form of long windows using a functional architectonic language, and given the great area of glass it was necessary the use of a high thermal performance glass with a refracting bronze tint avoiding that way the massive thermal absorption that could take place in the Sevillian summer, something to be expected. Instead of a geometric solution within the façade he opted for this technical solution so not to alter the volumetric purity of it.

 Situación / location    
 37º  40' 24.41" N
  5º  59' 17.59" W