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Invisible Icon

 

Honorable Mention
Tokyo Fashion Museum on Omotesando Street Competition.

 

Can something be an icon if no one can see it? In Tokyo, Omotesando signifies a location where the most avant-garde fashion and architecture converge. Invisible Icon asks the question of whether a fashion museum must compete with its contents. By wrapping the building’s façade with reflective glass covered by a translucent skin, Invisible Icon moves light across its surface by reflecting, absorbing and omitting, while challenging the way its overall form is perceived. Resting on a 10-meter concrete base, the ‘invisible’ façade extrudes up 80 meters giving way to a clear-glass enclosure housing a floating Japanese garden. 

 

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The concrete base lifts its edge at ground level, creating an entry threshold. Upon entering, a large volume opens to reveal suspended, light-filled galleries above. Moving up into the ‘particlized’ galleries, garments and other artifacts are exhibited in voids created by spheres intersecting. As visitors move up into the museum, galleries become less dense, allowing a greater view of the interior space. 

 

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Moving through a barely visible building, visitors experience a dynamic environment as they view fashion through particlized spheres and emerge into a floating glass enclosure. This sequence represents the museum’s overall tectonic of ephemeral spaces and a skin projecting their absence. 

Project Team:

KNE studio: 
Kevin Erickson, Johann Rischau, Brodie Bricker, Akira Hirosawa, Marc Rutzen