Ginza Six Opens on the Site of Tokyo’s Matsuzakaya Store

Ginza Six opened on 20 April 2017 on Chuo-dori, the main street of Ginza. It stands on the site of the Matsuzakaya department store, which had traded there since 1924 and closed in 2013, and of the block behind it. With 47,000 square metres of retail space and 241 shops, 121 of them flagships, it is the largest commercial complex in the district.

Who built it

The project was developed by a consortium of J. Front Retailing, the owner of Matsuzakaya, with Mori Building, Sumitomo Corporation and L Catterton Real Estate, the property investment firm linked to LVMH. The French group’s presence is visible on the main facade, where Dior, Celine, Fendi and other houses occupy multi-storey shopfronts, each with its own design. Among the watch and jewellery houses are Rolex, Chopard and Van Cleef & Arpels.

The complex marked a change in how luxury is sold in Tokyo. The department store, which rents counters to brands, gave way to a building in which brands lease and design their own spaces.

The architecture

The exterior is by Yoshio Taniguchi, the architect of the 2004 expansion of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He gave the upper floors a restrained facade of horizontal steel eaves, which he compared to the hisashi of traditional buildings, above the varied shopfronts on the street. The interiors are by Gwenael Nicolas of the Tokyo studio Curiosity, organised around a central atrium lit through panels that recall paper screens.

The atrium was conceived as a space for art. At the opening it held an installation by Yayoi Kusama: fourteen balloons in the form of white pumpkins with red dots, suspended over the escalators.

More than shops

The building includes several things that a mall would not usually have. The Kanze Noh Theatre, home of the leading school of Noh, moved from Shibuya to a purpose-built hall in the third basement. A large Tsutaya bookshop devoted to art, with a café, occupies much of the sixth floor. The roof is a public garden of 4,000 square metres, the largest in Ginza, with trees, water and an open view over the district. The upper floors are offices, and a tourist service centre and coach terminal serve visitors at street level.

Visiting

The developers expected 20 million visitors a year. The roof garden and the bookshop are the places to go even without shopping in mind, and the food hall in the second basement is among the best in the city. Ginza is ten minutes on foot from the hotels of Marunouchi and Hibiya, including The Peninsula Tokyo.