Tod's Omotesando Building

Toyo Ito’s Tod’s Omotesando Building is a slender, L-shaped building for the Italian footwear retailer, it contains offices and a boutique fronting Omotesando, Tokyo’s famous four-lane, tree-lined boulevard that in recent years has become the city’s showplace for luxury brands and top architects. The seven-storey building continues Ito's exploration of ideas of surface, the dramatic structure mimicking the shapes of the tall elm trees that stretch along Omotesando Avenue and reinterprets them in its façade as a series of crisscrossing geometric forms. The façade is a smooth blend of concrete and glass and materials are kept simple. The structural frame that supports the building is well concealed. Inside, opaque glass hides the rear view so that shoppers are drawn to the front of the store where they play an important role in animating the building. (text from RIBA Royal Gold Medal 2006 award).