A compact, seven-level glass volume in Tokyo’s Aoyama district compresses a retail program into a 369 sqm footprint, releasing a generous urban plaza on a constrained site. A rhomboid structural facade of convex, concave, and flat glass panels produces shifting refractions. At the same time, horizontal interior tubes align with the diamond modules to organize open floors into calibrated zones of display and privacy.
Aoyama Glass Tower Technical Information
- Architects: Herzog & de Meuron
- Location: Tokyo, Japan
- Gross Area: 2,860 m2 | 30,784 Sq. Ft.
- Project Years: 2000 – 2003
- Photographs: © Nacasa & Partners Inc, Courtesy of Herzog & de Meuron
We decided early on to focus on vertical volume containing the maximum permitted gross floor area so that part of the lot acreage can remain undeveloped. This area will form a kind of plaza, comparable to the public spaces of a European city.
– Herzog & de Meuron
Urban Strategy and Massing
The building compresses 2,860 sqm of program into a vertical figure of 32 m height and a compact 369 sqm footprint, releasing nearly two-thirds of the 953 sqm site as a public forecourt. This move exchanges frontage for porosity, offering a civic threshold in a tight urban parcel rather than occupying the entire lot. The open plaza functions as a spatial buffer in a busy retail corridor, extending the sidewalk and staging entry as a sequence from street to glazed interior.
Set amid a heterogeneous fabric of predominantly low-rise structures, the freestanding mass reads as a deliberate urban void paired with a singular object. Its placement and height resolve local constraints into a legible urban gesture: by concentrating volume, the project sidesteps the typical lot-line buildout and creates permeability around all sides. The elevation calibrates to the surrounding eave lines and the regulatory envelope, establishing a distinctive profile while maintaining a measured presence within the neighborhood.
Form, Envelope, and Optical Phenomena
The silhouette follows the angles prescribed by the local regulatory envelope, yielding a chamfered volume that alternates between a crystalline object and a saddle-roof archetype depending on the vantage point. This oscillation between abstract and familiar forms links typological memory to a contemporary figure, allowing the building to register as both an urban artifact and an optical device.
A rhomboid diagrid wraps the envelope and is infilled with convex, concave, and flat glass. The varying curvatures act as lenses, refracting and reflecting the surroundings at multiple scales. From the street, the facade compresses and expands fragments of the city; from within, it frames oblique views and layered reflections across floors. The result is a continuously shifting identity that changes with light conditions and position, engaging passersby and occupants in a reciprocal visual exchange.
Structure as Architecture
The facade is not an applied screen but an active structural component. Working with the vertical access cores, the diagrid supports the slabs at the perimeter, removing the need for a separate external frame. This integration reduces redundant systems and allows the enclosure to express its load-bearing role, clarifying the relationship between geometry and performance.
Horizontal tubes span between cores to stiffen the structure and complete a hybrid system of shell, cores, and diaphragms. These tubes are scaled as inhabitable cabinets that organize program and services along otherwise open, daylighted floors. The diamond facade modules align with the tubes, tying structural logic to spatial order. This alignment streamlines the plan, reduces secondary partitions, and maintains clear sightlines through a robust yet legible framework.
Interior Atmosphere and Material Strategy
The interiors are orchestrated as a sequence of open platforms punctuated by cabinet-like tubes. The glazing’s optics create layered vistas across levels and toward the city, producing a cinematographic rhythm of proximity and distance as one moves between display zones. The tubes provide partial enclosure for changing rooms, counters, and other private areas, tempering the public character of the floors without disrupting continuity.
Material choices intensify this duality. Surfaces range from hyper-artificial finishes such as resin, silicone, and fiberglass to hyper-natural elements like leather, moss, and porous timber. The juxtaposition resists a singular stylistic reading, instead placing craft alongside industrial fabrication within the same structural and optical matrix. Custom furnishings and lighting are conceived as extensions of the architecture, calibrating brightness, reflectivity, and tactility to negotiate privacy, circulation, and display within the diagrid’s disciplined order.
About Herzog & de Meuron
Herzog & de Meuron is a Basel-based architectural practice founded in 1978 by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. Known for their innovative integration of form, structure, and materials, the firm approaches architecture as a cultural and sensory experience. Their work often explores the expressive potential of building envelopes and the relationship between architecture and context, balancing conceptual clarity with material experimentation.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Architect Planning: Herzog & de Meuron, Basel, Switzerland
- Landscape Design: Herzog & de Meuron, Basel, Switzerland
- Associate Architect: Takenaka Corporation, Tokyo, Japan
- Design Team: Stefan Marbach (Associate, Project Architect), Reto Pedrocchi (Project Architect), Wolfgang Hardt (Project Architect), Luca Andrisani, Andreas Fries, Yuko Himeno, Hiroshi Kikuchi, Shinya Okuda, Daniel Pokora, Georg Sebastian Schmid, Mathis Tinner
- Structural engineers: Takenaka Corporation, Tokyo, Japan; WGG Schnetzer Puskas Ingenieure AG, Basel, Switzerland
- MEP consultants: Takenaka Corporation, Tokyo, Japan
- Landscape designers: Herzog & de Meuron, Basel, Switzerland
- Client: Prada (PRADA Japan Co., Ltd), Tokyo, Japan
- Construction company: Takenaka Corporation, Tokyo, Japan
- Facade Consulting: Emmer Pfenninger Partner AG, Basel, Switzerland;
- Lighting Consulting: Arup Lighting, London, UK;
- Fire Protection Consulting: Takenaka Corporation, Tokyo, Japan;
- Large Scale Store Law: Takenaka Corporation, Tokyo, Japan
