MOREXLESS

Intertwined concrete facade_Tod's Omotesando_Toyo Ito & Associates

Project: Tod's Omotesando Building

Location: Aoyama, Tokyo, Japan

Year: 2002-2004

Architect(s): Toyo Ito & Associates

In Omotesando area, many shops have been constructed, for luxurious trademarks. Toyo Ito chose the concrete as main building material, being a bold proposal, the use of a substantial and strong, absent material in the “glass architecture” that it characterizes to the adjacent buildings. After to think about how to design the facade, in order to introduce openings on the concrete facade, it was conceived the idea of using an integrated structure by the superposition of silhouettes of trees.

The innovative structure with the concrete walls and glass, with the tree shape, it makes that its branches are structural and they surround the building for its six faces, creating a spectacular visual effect and allowing the widest glazed entry. Due to its "L" form (plans) and its narrow facade, it was designed the branched structure that unifies the volume itself. This exterior surface serves such as graphic pattern and structural system. It is constructed by reinforced concrete (30cm of thickness) and fixed glazing without frame. The resultant surface supports the slabs without any internal column.

The facade, with interlaced concrete supports re-interprets the silhouettes of the elm trees that border on the street. Following the structural logic of botany, the columns are more wide in the base of the building, becoming more slender at the same time they are gaining height. Therefore, they are branching out in a major number of structural elements. Basically, it is a merge between a block and a curtain wall, that it is supported by concrete and steel members. Also, to avoid the break of the glazing, before a possible earthquake, the structure rests on shock-absorbers located in the foundations, something habitual in the Japanese constructions.