The challenge of this project designed by Zelig Fok at the Savannah College of Art and Design was to design a boutique and showroom for the Japanese fashion label Comme des Garçons in Tokyo’s Aoyama shopping district. Architecture and fashion share a dedication to experimental design as well as the ability to question customary enclosure/dress, prescribed aesthetics, and notion of beauty. Collections by the fashion designer were studied, particularly where padded figures were stuffed beneath or sewn into the lining of garments.

This project creates architectural enclosure that fluctuates between 2D flat and 3D massing effects. The interior objects are soft bubbles aggregated into a tense constellation. The outer object has harder edges and addresses the site boundaries. This formal morphology acts to deny the simultaneity between the container and the contained. Similarly, figural cuts, creases, and tattoos work against this surface geometry. Competing surface logics and hybrid articulation confound the boundaries between interior and exterior as the building enclosure modulates between thin surface and thick poché. This strategy challenges architecture’s traditional hierarchies of enclosure and internal subdivision of space.