When I first saw this picture of Louis Vuitton's flagship store in Manhattan I thought it was AI. That is where we are right now. When something looks wild, I just automatically assume it's fake. But alas, it's not fake. Louis Vuitton is renovating their flagship store at the corner of 57th Street and 5th Avenue and so, naturally, they decided to completely cover it with luggage facade wraps.
These wraps make the entire building look like six grey trunks stacked on top of each other and are a nod to a 19th century luggage design from the company. They even used real metal details throughout. Apparently the heaviest luggage handle weighs something like 5,000 pounds.
This is wild and remarkable in so many ways. The scale of it is remarkable. This is a 15 storey building concealed entirely by luggage trunks. It also speaks to the scale and dominance of New York as a city. Not every city can absorb a pile of giant luggage trunks and not bat an eye. But in New York, it's just another noteworthy thing within its relentless urban grid.
I also can't help but think of the work of architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. In 1972, they published a book called Learning from Las Vegas. And in it, they defined two types of contrasting buildings: decorated sheds and ducks. Decorated sheds are, as the name suggests, nondescript buildings. Think big box stores. These buildings get their specificity from signage and other ornament because, without this, they'd just be nondescript sheds.
Duck buildings are, on the other hand, buildings that take on a symbolic form. In other words, their shape and construction tell you what they're all about. The term duck comes from an actual building that looks like a duck, namely The Big Duck on Long Island. This is a building that was built in the 1930s to help promote the owner's duck farming business and is now on the US National Register of Historic Places.
The Big Duck is and was an actual building, whereas Louis Vuitton's trunks are just temporary construction wrap. So they're not exactly the same thing. Still, the similarities are there. Both were erected to promote their respectiveness businesses. And both tell you, through their form, what's meant to happen inside. So in this sense, Louis Vuitton has just created its own Big Duck.
Photo by Brad Dickson via Dezeen
