GINZA SIX House of Dior Ginza

Practical Application of Lenticular Lenses on a Building Scale

GINZA SIX House of Dior Ginza

Chuo-ku, Tokyo

DETAIL DESIGN: Joint venture by Ginza-Rokuchome-Chiku-Shigaichi-Saikaihatsu(Taniguchi and Associates, KAJIMA DESIGN)

DETAIL SUMMARY OF WORK: This is the facade of House of Dior Ginza, located in GINZA SIX at the corner of Chuo-dori Street and Kojunsha-dori Street. It was designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, who also supervised the cladding design and basic design of GINZA SIX as a whole.
Space for the depth of the “noren curtain” was restricted to only 145mm, so the theme of the design was how to give it visual depth. Through a process of trial and error, we arrived at the idea of using lenticular lenses, which change their pattern with the viewing angle, providing a feeling of solid depth. This idea had never been tried on the scale of a building, but we developed a special cutter and succeeded
in producing prototypes. After grinding, the surface of the 29 mm-thick clear acrylic plates were polished by hand, and these plates were then laid over 5 mm-thick translucent acrylic with printed 3D-processed images. The result is a facade which projects an image of the draping lines of dresses fluttering as pedestrians’ lines of sight shift.

Our technique to make 3D images appear uniform: If there is any inconsistency in brightness with the LEDs embedded in both sides of the frame, the images do not appear vivid. We added reflectors alongside the LEDs to make the light spread uniformly across the whole area. The rear panels are gray at the parts closer to a light source, and they gradate to white with distance from the light. This treatment eliminates halation. We also ran repeated experiments and adjustments, at the level of 1-mm units, to fine-tune the materials, colors, shapes, and position balance in order to avoid the ends becoming darker.