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Architects: Kengo Kuma & Associates
- Area: 133 m²
- Year: 2009
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Photographs:Daici Ano
Text description provided by the architects. In the meeting at Shinsaibashi, looking down the street of luxurious brand shops, Lucien asked for a soft and warm space, rather than icy, solid one. In response to his idea, we proposed a plan to realize the softness of Lucien Pellar-Finet cashmere in the architecture. In seeking balance between the cost and the creation of various organic patterns, a ‘vegetable wall’ was born, which is made of structural plywood with two kinds of width and three types of aluminum connectors. From just beside, it looks that pentagons and parallelogram are repeated and extended further in the interior like a cave, creating a honeycomb-like internal space with lots of different cells.
By changing the cutting of sections, each cell in the wall has become practical fittings, like a shelf or box to place the products. Rather than setting in an individual wall or furniture separately in the shop, we wanted to create a single, sequenced and functional wall that covers the entire space. This vegetable wall grows like a liana, from the café in the basement towards the boutique on 1st and 2nd floor and the library on the top floor, and among the ‘vines’ come out cashmeres like fruits born from the plant. It was a collaboration between fashion and plant-likened architecture.
