It is hardly news that Prada spent a lot of money on their new flagship store in Tokyo's swish Aoyama district. The real surprise is what they got for it.
Other less adventurous clients, and less talented architects, might have turned the project's 10 billion yen budget into a thinly disguised, six-story-high pile of cash. Here, though,the collaboration between Prada and Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron has resulted in an astonishing spatial and technical achievement -- a building that opens up whole new avenues of exploration for contemporary architecture.
Jacque Herzog and Pierre de Meuron approach design as a form of research -- research whose main purpose is to generate new architectural experiences.