Design Meets High Fashion at Prada’s Flagship Tokyo Store

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Image credit: Wiiii via Wikimedia CommonsWhen the Prada store in Tokyo opened its doors in 2003, it made headlines for its avant-garde style, something that really struck a chord with Naveen Jaggi, President, Retail Brokerage at JLL Americas, when he first saw it.

“It doesn’t have to compete with anything nearby for eye contact: it makes a statement by itself, which in turn is both brave and pioneering. I instantly fell in love with it.”

Designed by Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron, Prada’s flagship store in the fashionable Aoyama District of Tokyo cost an estimated $80 million to construct. The six floor, glass ‘crystal’ – named as such for its five sided shape with flat, convex and concave ‘bubbles’ – stands away from any other retail site, amid pricey flats and office buildings. In addition to its fashion credentials, the building is also used as a part-time events space, and even boasts an outdoor area for the public, something of a rarity in space starved Tokyo.

At a time when Japan was still in the midst of a major recession, all of the building’s facets could have come across as crass and flashy. Instead, as Jaggi notes, it signalled the importance of standing out from the crowd.

Continue reading this My Kind of Building story on JLL’s Real Views new site

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