As one of the best selling luxury brands season after season, Gucci knows how to keep its global following gasping for more. Indeed, not only with coveted new garments and style vocabulary, but also with alluring retail design and in-store adventure. Indeed, unadulterated adventure! The Gucci flagship store on Namiki dori in Tokyo‘s bustling Ginza shopping district officially opened its doors only a year ago – mind you, we covered the event in a previous post – and to celebrate its first anniversary, a new a site-specific sculpture by Japanese bamboo artist extraordinaire Chikuunsai Tanabe IV (1973) has been revealed. The bamboo sculpture is anchored on the ground floor in the store’s spiral staircase and sees several swirling branches emerge, and some meander further upstairs and attach themselves to the ceiling. Woven from black bamboo, which represents tradition, and white bamboo, which represents the future, the sculpture creates modern elements while preserving tradition. In fact, it aims to signal Gucci‘s steps toward the future, incorporating and continuing to evolve. The collaboration between Gucci and Tanabe follow the Gucci Bamboo House showcase which was held in Kyoto last summer in celebration of the luxury brand’s 100th anniversary. And that’s not all, folks. The Gucci fan base can indulge in limited-edition trophies, notably the Gucci Bamboo 1947 and Gucci Diana bags with bamboo handles and in special colours, and upstairs, at Gucci Osteria, chef Antonio Iaco Viello has added bamboo to the original seasonal menu that combines traditional Italian cuisine with Japanese ingredients.
Gucci
6-6-12 Ginza (Ginza)
Tokyo 104-0061
Telephone: +81 120 992177
Daily 11am-8pm
Publishers Note
Just to be clear – superfuture® is a design blog and not a political commentator. No surprise there. The scope of our content has always been global and borderless, however that can often mean covering projects in countries where we will not agree with the politics or actions of those countries. In a world that’s as screwed up as ever right now, the focus of our support is to those designers, architects and other creatives who aim to make the world a more liveable one – as opposed to people that try their hardest to destroy it. So if a project hits our desk and we like it based on its design credentials, we may choose to publish regardless of its location or creators nationality. superfuture® has always been inclusive and hopes for all current wars, aggression, violence, hate and extremism to end.
