Ginza Architecture and Design

The Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Center features a central concrete pillar, thirteen inches in diameter, from which individual office modules hang like boxes. Architect Kenzo Tange designed the tower in nineteen sixty-six to accommodate…

The facade of the Louis Vuitton Ginza Namiki building ripples like a column of water caught in sunlight. Its exterior consists of two layers of dichroic glass, engineered to shift in color as the sun moves across the Tokyo sky. Architects…

The Nicholas G Hayek Centre stands out with a glass facade that opens fully to the street, housing a vertical gallery of luxury watch boutiques. When the weather permits, these shop windows move outward and upward, transforming the…

The glass block walls of the Maison Hermes form a massive, glowing grid that rises thirteen stories above the Ginza district. Designed by Renzo Piano in two thousand one, the building uses thirteen thousand individual glass blocks, each…

The white, latticed facade of Ginza Place wraps around the intersection like a ceramic lace skin. Designed by Klein Dytham architecture, the structure uses thousands of aluminum panels meant to echo the traditional craft of Edo Kiriko cut…

The Seiko House Ginza Clock Tower sits at the corner of the Ginza crossing, topped by a rounded, decorative copper dome. Kintaro Hattori, the founder of the company, opened his first shop on this site in eighteen eighty-one. After the…

The Mikimoto Ginza Main Store stands out for its curved, lattice-like facade that looks like a delicate mesh of white coral. This is the birthplace of the cultured pearl. In eighteen ninety-three, Kokichi Mikimoto succeeded in creating the…

The Okuno Building features a manual elevator with an accordion gate that requires a firm hand to operate. Completed in nineteen thirty-two, this structure once served as luxury apartments for the elite of Ginza. Yoshiaki Okuno designed it…