Architecture is a mixture of form and function, just like fashion. Clothes are supposed to be comfortable and beautiful at the same time but its design can easily turn out to be a vague ornament in some ocasions. However, some of the biggest world firms such as Chanel, Armani or Louis Vuitton are known for enhancing the human beauty that we already have rather than being a  “decorative” element of our body.

This type of program, fashion retail, is very interesting because it reaches a point where function becomes form and vice versa. If the aim of a store is to transmit beauty, to express class and to sell, its function very much depends on its form. Therefore, fashion architecture is the most plastic kind of architecture, getting close to the limits of art and even sculpture.

Here you have a very particular collection of stores. Would you love to shop here?

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1. Louis Vuitton Osaka

Location: Osaka (Japan)
Architect: Jun Aoki
Year: 2020
Description: The Louis Vuitton Maison Osaka Midosuji has just opened to the public. As a result of a close collaboration between architects Jun Aoki and Peter Marino, the four-floor luxury store is a reflection of the city’s international travel hub status. Inspired by Osaka’s history as a sea-faring city, Jun Aoki “imagined a light and airy white structure inspired by the traditional Higaki-Kaisen cargo ship and its billowing sails”. With metal frameworks motifs used on the ground level, the project seems to float on water. Utilizing natural light, the retail store “breathes the city’s energy, while offering clients a sense of calm and respite”. Read more here.

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2. Art Deco Project

Location: Miami (USA)
Architect: Aranda Lasch
Year: 2015
Description: Located in the city’s new Design District, the building houses Tom Ford, Lanvin, and Omega stores. Miami’s historic architecture is defined by the Art Deco movement from the 1920s to the 1940s where bold geometric motifs shape the city’s landmarks. Inspired by the pleated Art Deco patterns found in its architecture and fashion, the building is given a texture that seeks to revisit the exuberance and ornament of Miami’s golden era. Read more here.

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3. Dior

Location: Seoul (South Korea)
Architect: Christian de Portzamparc
Year: 2015
Description: In Seoul, where the quadrangular buildings align with the avenue, and which are all occupied by leading international fashion labels, the building stands out like a large sculptural tribute to Dior, inviting everyone to step inside. The entrance, where two shells come together, is a sort of modern lancet arch, in which two metal mesh surfaces cross in line with the clothing metaphor. Once inside, the customer makes a succession of discoveries – a feature typical of the interiors designed by Peter Marino. Read more here.

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4. Prada Aoyama

Location: Tokyo (Japan)
Architect: Herzog & deMeuron
Year: 2003
Description: The shape of the building is substantially influenced by the angle of incidence of the local profile. Depending on where the viewer is standing, the body of the building will look more like a crystal or like an archaic type of building with a saddle roof. Read more here.

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5. Armani Store

Location: New York (US)
Architect: FUKSAS
Year: 2009
Description: The nucleus of the project is the staircase that connects the floors. It’s an element completely indipendent that can be assimilated with difficulty to a simple geometric figure, that originates a whirlwind with a great dymanism, and around of it there are the different levels that receive the Armani’s world. Read more here.

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© Philipp Heer

6. Hermès Store

Location: Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
Architect: MVRDV
Year: 2016
Description: P.C. Hooftstraat, a delightful little street dating mostly to the 19th century, is nowadays known for its high-end flagship stores. In 2016, MVRDV was appointed to revamp this brick block and the result couldn’t be more thoughtful. Using hundreds of specially-engineered glass bricks and a transparent high-strength sealant, the façade was made more permeable whilst still mimicking the original building design and evoking the vernacular aspects of the area. When Hermès moved in earlier in 2019, they further enhanced the space removing a blank wall from behind the upper half of the facade (making the interior entirely visible from the outside) and adding special brand culture touches (like the delicate leather handrails of the main staircase). Read more here.

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7. Louis Vuitton Marina Bay Sands

Location: Marina Bay Sands (Singapore)
Architect: Moshde Safdie Architects
Year: 2012
Description: The radical design for a stand alone store has become the first of it’s kind, an “Island Maison”. Louis Vuitton is a world renowned brand know for it’s commitment to fashion, lifestyle, culture, Art + Architecture. It’s not surprising that an innovative concept was envisioned for their South East Asian flagship store. Read more here.

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8. Gyre Shopping Center

Location: Tokyo (Japan)
Architect: MVRDV
Year: 2007
Description: Spectacular design of a box-shaped building, with a magnificent façade and 7 floors. By gradually twisting these floors around a central core, a series of terraces emerge, connected by stairs and elevators that are positioned outside the volumes. Read more here.

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9. Christian Dior

Location: Tokyo (Japan)
Architect: SANAA
Year: 2004
Description: While the box itself is unexciting – though modulated by some variety in floor height, articulated by the bands around the building – the building’s showpiece is its skin. The clean, square, outer skin of clear glass covers a second skin inside, of translucent acrylic. This gives the external facade the gentlest of hints at what is inside (while revealing nothing), and provides a glowing blank canvas for seasonal additions. Read more here.

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10. Maison Hermès

Location: Tokyo (Japan)
Architect: Renzo Piano
Year: 2006
Description: The small tower is entirely wrapped in 13,000 bespoke, 450mm square glass blocks, with special curved blocks on the corners. At night the building resembles a giant glowing Japanese lantern. Every element of the building was designed to withstand earthquakes and absorb seismic shockwaves. The building contains a shop, offices, an exhibition space and access to the underground station below Harumi Avenue. Read more here.

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11. Labels 2

Location: Berlin (Germany)
Architect: HHF Architects
Year: 2010
Description: Conceived to provide showroom space for approximately thirty different international fashion labels.  The design concept responds to the architecture of the adjacent building.  The interior spaces of this historical building are strongly characterized by the repetition of arched windows used in the façade. Read more here.

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12. TOD’S

Location: Tokyo (Japan)
Architect: Toyo Ito
Year: 2004
Description: 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. Read more here.

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13. Valentino Store

Location: New York (US)
Architect: David Chipperfield
Year: 2014
Description: Fashion house Valentino’s New York flagship store is designed with a grey Terrazzo interior. A new eight-storey facade has been added to the Postmodern building, originally designed by architects John Burgee and Philip Johnson. The black steel and aluminium elements are designed to echo Mies van der Rohe’s nearby Seagram Building. The lower levels contain the store and are clad with vertical brass bars and incorporate a lantern, a clock and the brand’s logo in the same material. Read more here.

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14. Prada Epicenter

Location: New York (US)
Architect: Rem Koolhas- OMA
Year: 2001
Description: New York’s Prada Epicenter – an exclusive boutique, a public space, a gallery, a performance space, a laboratory – is part of OMA / AMO’s ongoing research into shopping, arguably the last remaining form of public activity, and a strategy to counteract and destabilize any received notion of what Prada is, does, or will become. Read more here.

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15. Dior

Location: Miami (US)
Architect: Barbaritobancel Architectes
Year: 2016
Description: Haute Couture and Architecture can meet around these values. Architecture transcends fashions and its image needs to outlive time that goes by and continue to represent de Dior spirit in a lasting manner. Through large curved movements of white concrete, clear figures of the ‘plissée’ take shape, between which the spaces of the boutique slide in. The nobility of the smooth and delicate surfaces is given by a contemporary material made of ultra high-density concrete and by marble powder. Read more here.

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16. Mikimoto Ginza 

Location: Tokyo (Japan)
Architect: Toyo Ito
Year: 2005
Description: Ginza, literally means “place of silver” and has been a commercial district of Tokyo. The building of apparent simplicity comprises a prism perforated by a series of irregular windows. The concept is based on the building is held by its facade, leaving the internal spaces column-free. Read more here.

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17. Puma City

Location: Multiple Global Ports
Architect: LOT EK Architecture and design
Year: 2008
Description: Twenty-four shipping containers are retrofitted and transformed into PUMA City, a transportable retail and event building. The building was assembled and disassembled a number of times at several different international ports. PUMA City is conceived as a three level stack of containers, shifted to create internal outdoor spaces, large overhangs and terraces. Read more here.

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