Each week, Wired Design brings you a photo of one of our favorite buildings, showcasing boundary-pushing architecture and design involved in the unique structures that make the world's cityscapes interesting. Check back Fridays for the continuing series, and feel free to make recommendations in the comments, by Twitter, or by e-mail.
The pink, spontaneous exterior of Toyo Ito's Mikimoto Building in Tokyo is a spontaneous-seeming design that hides a complicated structural scheme. The windows, laid out to look like random chunks were cut from the building, belie the atypical structure; because some windows curl around the building's corners, there are no supporting columns where there should be. To keep the inside open, Ito used steel plates, filled with concrete and welded together for the walls. The resulting structure, nine stories high with a narrow 2,500-square-foot footprint, was completed in 2005 as headquarters for Mikimoto Pearl company.
Photo: Toshihiro Oimatsu/Flickr
Building of the Week: Makimoto's Bubblegum and Pearls
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Building of the Week: Makimoto's Bubblegum and Pearls
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Building of the Week: Makimoto's Bubblegum and Pearls
