Comme des Garçons New York – taking another look almost twenty years on

Appropriating it as their canvas, the street artists of New York have added their graffiti to the façade of the store over the years since its completion.

Rather than creating an entirely new façade, which was the original brief, the existing nineteenth century fabric with all the old signage and external industrial fire escapes was retained. Grafted behind the central existing brickwork entrance arch is the link: an asymmetric entrance structure made entirely from aluminium that draws the visitor in from the noise of the New York street. The entrance becomes a transition, not entirely inside or outside, but a fissure through an existing building heading to new environment. The skin was mechanically formed and then finished to reveal the hands of the maker.