United Arrows Harajuku main shop

Located in the heart of the Shibuya shopping district, the concept was to create a small luxury fashion centre comprising shops on five levels, a bar and a restaurant. An interior street divides the building into two volumes which link up on the top floor, providing the public with a flowing, varied itinerary. Exploiting this transparency and the fragmented form, the strip shops engage with visitors as they circulate through the building. It imposes a unique industrial sense of order, a regular, well-defined interior which contrasts with the surrounding urban fabric, a neighbourhood in which no buildings relate in height, form, scale or materials. The intimate, inner sense of space relates to Japanese tradition in the ‘tsuboniwa’ or formal Japanese garden.