Jun Aoki – architecture tokyo

2004 – Louis Vuitton Ginza – Jun Aoki

Jun Aoki was commissioned to design of the exterior wall of the Louis Vuitton store in Ginza. White, translucent alabaster from India is cast in beige glassfiber-reinforced concrete (GRC) and polished so that square shapes, large and small, appear to be scattered randomly in the wall, somewhat like terrazzo. Square areas, large and small, are also randomly arranged over the exterior wall as a whole. In those areas, the back of the panel is polished to a thickness of 15 millimeters and reinforced with a glass panel. These square areas alternately light up and vanish. The display windows too seem like fragments in terrazzo; three layers of highly-transparent glass are combined and made flush with the exterior wall. The opaque wall panels are connected to the structure by GRC rib-bolts; the transparent panels are supported by glass DPS.

Name: Louis Vuitton Ginza│Type: Commercial│Architect: Jun Aoki│Completed: 2004

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2002 – Louis Vuitton Omotesando – Jun Aoki

Jun Aoki designed the Louis Vuitton building in the image of a pile of trunks stacked at random. The trunks, each representing a unique space, are connected with a labyrinth of corridors – offering a small journey between trunks. The building relates in scale to the mixed residential and commercial area of Omotesando, with the soft texture of the metal fabric on the facade conveying the texture of fallen leaves from the big zelkova trees in front of the building.

The store is an assemblage of various spaces; the basic units are not floors but levels. The shape of all spaces are right-angled boxes in various scales, proportions and natural light conditions. The total shape of the building is the result of piling up the box-like shapes. The dimensions are 25.5 meters in width, 20.8 meters in depth and 31.9 meters in height, made up of rectangular parallelepiped units stacked in an irregular pile. The structure, located in interstitial spaces 30 centimeters deep and 37 centimeters high between the rectangular parallelepiped units, is a non-uniform cage with few vertically aligned columns. The columns and beams are all made from wide-flange steel members 20 centimeters by 20 centimeters in cross-section. The exterior finish consists of two types of metal mesh, polished stainless panels or two layers of glass ornamented with patterns. LV Hall on the seventh floor has a triple-height ceiling and is wrapped in a three-layered screen of metal mesh, glass and white lace embroidered with white ribbons.

Name: Louis Vuitton Omotesando│Type: Commercial│Architect: Jun Aoki│Completed: 2002

Location