This flagship store for Coach is located on a busy corner of the Inokashira-dori, Japan’s busiest shopping area for its trend-setting, young clientele. The store design effectively addresses several key issues: To respond to its lively retail context with a fresh and innovative take on the company’s prototypical American image, to attract fast-moving passers-by into the store and induce them up to the second level of sales space, and to further develop prototype furnishings to reflect the upbeat tastes of the young consumer.

For a fresh response to its context, the façade is conceived as a lit, three-dimensional billboard. The existing façade was stripped down to structure and then clad in backlit etched glass. It is punctured by volumes which push out to the pedestrians and then open in to reveal the interior. A large rectangular volume clad in American walnut, which projects out and suspends above the sidewalk, punctuates the side façade. It is, in fact, the volume of the second floor pushing out through the building skin. A window in this volume reveals to the pedestrian a glimpse of the space and product on the second floor. On the front façade, a double height display/entry window volume opens a view into the multi-level interior

Inside the store, the walnut volume suspends in the double-height space, a sweeping open stair of floating travertine treads leading toward its interior. The strong presence of the walnut “display box” compels the customer up the stairs to explore what is within. Inside the box, travertine flooring wraps up the walls to provide a rich display surface for cantilevered shelves and “floating” wall cabinets in white-washed maple.