With its tiered roof of interlocking clay tiles, latticed wooden exterior and exposed beams, the new Issey Miyake Kyoto flagship, located in the city's Nakagyo area, is more than just a store; it's a celebration of one of Kyoto's best-known traditional structures — the machiya (merchant townhouse).
For Issey Miyake, famed for weaving together cutting-edge design with traditional Japanese values and craftsmanship, the 132-year-old machiya is the result of years of searching for the ideal space for its first stand-alone store in Kyoto, a city steeped in historical significance.
Conceived by Naoto Fukasawa, a longtime Issey Miyake design collaborator and current director of The Japan Folk Crafts Museum, the structure's overarching palette of soft grays is inspired by the color of sumi (charcoal) and highlights the machiya's original architectural features. Walls, sheathed in plaster blended with charcoal, meet a slightly duskier shade of concrete floor, while overhead wooden beams accentuate the structure's high ceiling and open mezzanine. Letting in natural light from the rear is a glass wall that looks out onto a slate path that cuts through a bed of smooth gray pebbles and leads to another traditional feature, the machiya's kura (storehouse), now the Issey Miyake Kyoto gallery space.