Made You Look: Tiffany Reveals a Shigeru Ban–Designed Facade in Palo Alto
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What if the appearance of buildings weren’t actually fixed and could be changed as easily as, say, pulling on a sweater? It’s a concept Pritzker prize–winning architect, Shigeru Ban, has explored in the facade design of Tiffany & Co.’s revamped Palo Alto, California, store, which reopened to the public last week.
The facade—which forms the entry to a renewed 6,300-square-foot store in Palo Alto’s Stanford Shopping Center—is composed of accordion-like pleats crafted from American oak and glass. As passersby stroll past from the left side of the building, the storefront has the appearance of being made entirely of timber; as you pass from the right, however, it appears to be made of gleaming Tiffany Blue glass. “For this project, I wanted to use the Tiffany Blue differently,” Ban said in a statement.
The facade, the architect’s first project in California, is an elegant, simple gesture from an architect known for graceful yet humble architectural solutions. Ban’s design for the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado, for example, utilized a timber space frame roof structure and a delicate basketweave wood facade. La Seine Musicale, a performing arts center outside Paris, featured a timber structural system, as well as a solar panel–clad “sail.” Since 1994, the architect has explored the potential of simple, readily available materials—cardboard, plywood, and even paper—to design and deploy shelters in the midst of humanitarian disasters, including a Styrofoam house prototype for Ukraine and temporary housing in Marrakech.
“I’ve made buildings with facades that are very flexible, to take advantage of the natural ventilation in the good seasons,” Ban said. “This project with Tiffany is part of the same kind of attitude; the design can change depending on the conditions. My dream is making buildings that, like people, can change their clothes depending on the season, instead of just preparing the building for the worst conditions.”
It’s not the jewelry house’s first collaboration with a Pritzker prize–helmed firm; in 2006, Tiffany & Co. collaborated with Frank Gehry on a jewelry collection, and earlier this year it revealed a dazzling overhaul of its iconic Fifth Avenue flagship in Manhattan, with architecture by OMA.
The Ban collaboration “marks the latest chapter in Tiffany & Co.’s design evolution” the company noted in a press release—a hint that even more A-list architectural interventions may be on deck.
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