Tokyo Hipsters Club

Building a brand spanking new store from the foundations up is usually the preserve of European luxury brands, but down in Harajuku, a huge new concrete monolith called Tokyo Hipsters Club is an exception to the rule.

With three floors, including a gallery, book store and rooftop cafe besides the retail space, THC is the brainchild of Kobe-based Japanese fashion giant World, whose annual sales top 230 billion yen.

World drafted in British designer Tom Dixon, creative director of Habitat UK, to undertake his first-ever foray into the realm of architecture.

Described by Dixon as a "pleasantly brutal space," this foreboding concrete box is being billed as a hangout for rebellious fashionistas, but style-sensitive shoppers expecting to be amazed are likely to come away feeling cheated.

"Tokyo Hipsters Club is a piece of antiarchitecture by a nonarchitect," explains Dixon.

"The shape is defined by the allowable height within the restrictions imposed by the city of Tokyo; the materials defined by speed of construction; the internal spaces defined by the earthquake regulations."

Starting with the concept of "aristocracy gone wrong," Dixon's big idea for this edifice was to transpose a traditional British gentlemen's club into the setting of 21st-century Tokyo.