COLLECTIONS › DESIGNERS’ OWN OFFICES
Collection
Furniture makers, architects and interior firms — how Japan’s office designers design for themselves.
Japan’s office-furniture makers, architects and interior firms use their own offices as a working showroom. What they build for themselves is often the clearest picture of where Japanese office design is heading.
01 · Shinagawa, Tokyo
THE CAMPUS in Shinagawa
KOKUYO opened Japan’s first “live office” fifty years ago, and THE CAMPUS in Shinagawa continues the idea: a working office that visitors can tour while KOKUYO’s own staff test the newest ways of working inside it.
Read the KOKUYO office →
02 · Chuo, Tokyo
Planting on the work floor
Office furniture maker ITOKI opened its Tokyo head office in 2018 around Activity Based Working.
Read the ITOKI office →
03 · Tokyo
CO-RiZ LABO, Tokyo
A company that sells office furniture has to work somewhere, and Okamura turned that problem into four named offices — one for each city, each with a stated idea about what work is.
Read the OKAMURA office →
04 · Odaiba, Tokyo
RESET SPACE_2, the park-like commons
Nomura Co., Ltd.
Read the NOMURA office →
05 · Tokyo
CROSSOVER Lab
Mitsui Designtec designs interiors for homes, hotels and offices.
Read the MITSUI DESIGNTEC office →
06 · Minato, Tokyo
The SEMBA Good Ethical Office
SEMBA, a Japanese space design and build company, renewed its head office in April 2021 as the “SEMBA Good Ethical Office”.
Read the SEMBA office →
07 · Shinagawa, Tokyo
Reception at the head office
Tanseisha builds spaces for a living, and designed its own working life as a network rather than a building: a head office in Shinagawa, satellite offices in Shinjuku and Yokohama, the home, a laboratory in Konan, and shared offices bought in from outside.
Read the TANSEISHA office →
08 · Kyobashi, Tokyo
The café, kept as a square
Hakuten designs experiences for other companies, and in 2024 it rebuilt its own office on the 20th floor of Tokyo Square Garden.
Read the HAKUTEN office →
09 · Toranomon, Tokyo
Minna no Hiroba, the shared square
One of Japan’s largest design firms moved into Toranomon Hills Mori Tower and planned its own floors the way it plans a city block.
Read the NIHON SEKKEI office →
10 · Iidabashi, Tokyo
The collective floor
In 2023 Nikken Sekkei opened a collective floor at its Tokyo head office.
Read the NIKKEN SEKKEI office →
11 · Shinjuku, Tokyo
Another kind of workplace, beside the main office
When the design division of Taisei Corporation rebuilt part of its own Shinjuku office in 2021, it called the result the Creative Media Office and described it in one line: an unfinished workplace that grows as it is used.
Read the TAISEI DESIGN office →
12 · Shinagawa, Tokyo
The Interforum void
Obayashi, one of Japan’s major general contractors, works from a head office in Shinagawa.
Read the OBAYASHI office →
13 · Kyōbashi, Tokyo
The three-storey lobby
Toda Corporation finished its own head office in Kyōbashi in September 2024: twenty-eight storeys over a three-storey lobby open to the street, five working floors the company calls a laboratory, and an eighth-floor reception given over to a museum about building.
Read the TODA CORPORATION office →Questions
WALL has picked 13: KOKUYO (Shinagawa, Tokyo), ITOKI (Chuo, Tokyo), OKAMURA (Tokyo), NOMURA (Odaiba, Tokyo), MITSUI DESIGNTEC (Tokyo), SEMBA (Minato, Tokyo), TANSEISHA (Shinagawa, Tokyo), HAKUTEN (Kyobashi, Tokyo), NIHON SEKKEI (Toranomon, Tokyo), NIKKEN SEKKEI (Iidabashi, Tokyo), TAISEI DESIGN (Shinjuku, Tokyo), OBAYASHI (Shinagawa, Tokyo), TODA CORPORATION (Kyōbashi, Tokyo).
They are spread across Tokyo: Tokyo (13).
Most are private workplaces and not open to the public. WALL reports on them from the companies’ own published material; each office page links to its source.
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