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Chanel's Crystal House

Between Agent Provocateur and Anne Fontaine shops, on high-end shopping street PC Hooftstraat, the brand new Chanel's flagship of Amsterdam is clearly recognizable thanks to a beautiful grand glass facade. The whole design was inspired by Dutch heritage, created by Netherlands-based architecture and urban planning firm MVRDV. They molded a glass extension onto the previous building's terracotta bricks to reproduce the original facade. The glass is impressive, it seems to float above the stone building.



As said by Winy Maas, co-founder of MVRDV, "Crystal Houses make space for a remarkable flagship store, respect the structure of the surroundings and bring a poetic innovation in glass construction. It enables global brands to combine the overwhelming desire of transparency with a couleur locale and modernity with heritage. It can thus be applied everywhere in our historic centres". The amount of work was gigantic as the shop is made of glass bricks, glass architraves and glass window frames that took 6-10 experts working on it every day with high-tech lasers.The store also runs on renewable energy sources.