Luxury village T-Site the latest Japanese retail experience

While Tokyoites - possibly the world's most dedicated shoppers - continue their long love affair with futuristic shopping malls and starchitect-designed flagship fashion stores, a new and innovative breed of small-scale luxury retail villages is proving popular with young and old alike.

These 21st-century consumers appreciate the combination of classic and cutting-edge shopping, dining and entertainment inside exceptional architectural design and interiors. The concept is a dramatic departure from mini-city-like malls such as Shibuya Hikarie, Tokyo's new 34-storey shopping centre, or the likes of Hong Kong's Times Square or Elements.

The first "village", opening late last year alongside a series of buildings designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki in upscale Daikanyama (renowned for its quirky boutiques and cafes frequented by Tokyo's wealthy), was Tsutaya's T-Site. The leading book, music and movie retailer is a household name throughout Japan - 35 million Japanese reportedly hold a T-points loyalty card for their 1,300-plus stores throughout the country.

Owner Muneaki Masuda, often referred to as Japan's Richard Branson, was convinced that the market would embrace a completely different retail experience that combined new technologies with traditional favourites, led largely by design. Faced with some opposition to his plans to fly in the face of evidence that traditional bookstores were struggling because younger customers had moved to online retailing, he decided to delist the company from the Tokyo Stock Exchange so as to retain complete freedom over the uncompromising quality of design and content of the Daikanyama project.

In less than a year T-site has won the World's Best Shopping Centres prize at the prestigious World Architecture Festival (WAF) Awards 2012 and been praised by the judges for "proposing a new direction combining retail with a social experience and integrating online retail with a tactile, physical experience".

The new-style retail environment combines three low-slung, elegant white pavilions connected via a "magazine street" and elevated bridge designed with a thoughtful integration of the interior and landscaped outdoors within a relaxed village-like setting. The "library-in-a-forest" design concept was created by Tokyo-based British architects Klein Dytham Architecture (KDa), who won the original keenly contested design commission from a star-studded list of 70 Japanese architects (including the likes of Kengo Kuma and Tadao Ando) thanks largely to their witty integration of the well-known eponymous brand's "T" in the T-inspired site layout, building shape and distinctive logo-perforated screen facade.