Maison Hermès Ginza: Renzo Piano’s Lantern of Glass Blocks
On a narrow lot on Harumi-dori, Renzo Piano wrapped Hermès's Tokyo home in about 13,000 glass blocks, built to shift in an earthquake. A look at the building.
Maison Hermès stands on a narrow plot on Harumi-dori, one of the main streets of Ginza. It was commissioned in 1998 and built in the early 2000s, then enlarged, and was designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop with Rena Dumas Architecture Intérieure of Paris, for Hermès Japon.
A façade of glass blocks
The façade is made of about 13,000 specially made glass blocks, each some 45 centimetres square, produced in Florence. The glass is translucent and stamped with a texture. The blocks are hung from the structure on steel arms and can move by up to 4 millimetres to absorb the forces of an earthquake. By day the front looks pale and faceted, and at night, lit from within, it becomes a lantern in the middle of a street of shops.
What is inside
The building is more than a shop. Retail takes the lower floors, while ateliers and offices are above. There is a double-height exhibition space on the seventh floor, a garden at the top, access to the underground station, and a small cinema, Le Studio, on the tenth floor, enlarged in the later extension.
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