Aroma Square

 

This impressive office building and cultural center, led by the design division of Shimizu Corporation, hosts many opportunities for landscape and urban design to connect and complement this unique complex.

MPFP proposed a continuous garden to wrap around all faces of the structure, providing a counterbalance to the complex’s vertical scale. Where a perfume company sits, the landscape is intimate and gardenesque, contrasting the main entrance and its passages, which are distinctly ceremonial. The flanks of both of these spaces direct views into a romantic copse of undulating clipped azalea and shade trees. Where the design opens up into a plaza, MPFP designed a dry stream with striated marble, honoring the form of a stream previously located on- site.

At the far end of the landscape, a large public plaza is centered on a mist-emitting conical steel sculpture using materials that connote richness and an attention to detail. On the side of the building, where the cooling units and transformer boxes inevitably had to be placed, MPFP designed a secluded garden, a seemingly paradoxical gesture that takes advantage of a view of the lobby.