Tokyo today is a cosmopolitan metropolis increasingly open to the world.
And it does so with style and a personal, innovative, and sustainable approach.
Just like Azabudai Hills. Nestled in the heart of the Minato district, this newly inaugurated area spans over 8 hectares, offering a serene escape from the hustle and bustle of urban life. Here, amidst vast green expanses teeming with trees, flowers, and tranquil water features, lies a true garden-city.
Built where once stood a temple and a large park, and where daily business of florists and launderers took place, the project by Heatherwick Studio has radically changed its appearance into one of the greenest areas of the city, carefully preserving its original character. Futuristic structural forms have become the “network” that embraces residential buildings and commercial spaces, temples, art galleries, and restaurants, to recall in a contemporary key the typical architectural congestion of Tokyo, where old and new, large and small architectures are stacked against each other.
Heatherwick Studio – a team of over 200 professionals, authors of “sustainable architectural regenerations” all over the world – has deliberately neglected every consolidated design dogma, taking instead freely inspiration from human experience and devoting the utmost attention to the inhabitants, their needs, and their emotions: to those things that were most important to them themselves.
The ambition of the project, lasting over thirty years, was to create a public space meant to be “lived” and to succeed in involving and retaining the community that has always inhabited the neighborhood. Once the works were completed, almost all of the previous inhabitants and businesses chose to return and populate this extraordinary “three-dimensional landscape”, which has succeeded in adding something fresh and welcoming to the modern urban fabric, too often impersonal, of a big metropolis.
Right opposite the green and sustainable area of Azabudai Hills, Paola Lenti Tokyo flagship finds its new home, transitioning from the residential district of Hiroo. In partnership with Atlantic Cars Ltd., the store seamlessly integrates into the Japanese culture, reflecting the brand’s commitment to aesthetics and craftsmanship. Designed to collaborate closely with architects and interior designers, the space invites creative exploration and bespoke solutions.
The neutral tones chosen for the walls and flooring enhance those bold shades that have always been a distinctive element of the Paola Lenti collections: the green and turquoise of the lava and glass surfaces, the solar yellow and deep red of the coverings, the vibrant pink and the decided purplish blue of the weaves.
Colours that create a pleasant contrast with the intentionally essential architecture of the space and that reflect those of the thousands of flower varieties that, season after season, will bloom in the extensive green spaces of Azabudai Hills.