Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron have created a two-storey store for Miu Miu in Aoyama. Check out the copper canopy that cleverly conceals the retail facade. From the architects:...

"Contrary to expectations for a site that is home to so many luxury brands, Miyuki Street in Aoyama Tokyo is not particularly beautiful or elegant. The architecture is heterogeneous – a hodgepodge of freestanding buildings of different heights and shapes, with neither historical tradition nor common standards. Never meant to be a space of its own, the street is a purely technical and functional link between Omotesando and the Aoyama Reien cemetery farther down the road.

Despite single trees here and there, the atmosphere is not inviting, like a boulevard or a plaza. Tokyo is pure, quintessential city, its territory exploited to the full with absolutely no leeway for the individuality that we take for granted in European cities."