COLLECTIONS › TIMBER OFFICES
Collection
Wood as the main material — roofs, rooms and lounges built from timber in Japanese offices.
About two-thirds of Japan is forest, and timber is coming back into offices as panelling, furniture and even structure. These are the offices built with — or around — wood.
01 · Chiba
The timber roof, like cloth
Thin timber woven in three layers forms a roof and walls that sag like a great sheet of cloth and wrap the people inside — “architecture like comfortable clothing”, in the company’s own phrase.
Read the ZOZO office →
02 · Meguro, Tokyo
Desks beside the timber rooms
Rows of desks sit on the atrium floor in daylight from the glass roof. Timber rooms stand among them like small houses, trees and grass growing on their roofs.
Read the RAKSUL office →
03 · Futako-Tamagawa, Tokyo
The wood-toned lounge
The lounge that leads to the visitor rooms is wood-toned and quiet.
Read the Rakuten office →
04 · Chuo, Tokyo
Timber steps
For 13F the team took part in developing furniture from the start, including a timber frame system called solmio.
Read the ITOKI office →
05 · Akasaka, Tokyo
The entrance
Just inside, a large kaonavi sign and a timber monument shaped like a tree greet visitors.
Read the KAONAVI office →
06 · Odaiba, Tokyo
Shelves and tables in the commons
All the timber used is fair wood.
Read the NOMURA office →
07 · Minato, Tokyo
Shelves around a work area
Around the floor, open shelving, plywood surfaces and coloured screens divide the space into corners for different kinds of work.
Read the SEMBA office →
08 · Kita-Shinjuku, Tokyo
A meeting room under a timber ceiling
The meeting rooms are where the office warms up — timber-lined walls, coloured acoustic panels, an angled wooden ceiling
Read the FROMSOFTWARE office →
09 · Azabudai, Tokyo
The Chubu office
The Chubu office is the most domestic of the four: timber walls, a fireplace-like screen and a reception counter in pale wood.
Read the PERSOL CAREER office →
10 · Toranomon, Tokyo
The reception wall
The wall behind the desk is built from wooden pieces cut in the shape of the company mark: many individual pieces making one figure.
Read the NIHON SEKKEI office →
11 · Chayamachi, Osaka
The lift hall
its timber-toned walls cut with diagonal lines that echo the company mark
Read the YANMAR office →
12 · Shinagawa, TokyoNEW
Timber and the crane mark
Japan Airlines renewed the reception and meeting floor of its head office in Shinagawa in 2025.
Read the JAL office →
13 · Shinagawa, TokyoNEW
Timber louvres
LIXIL’s new head office in Shinagawa is designed as a “second home”.
Read the LIXIL office →
14 · ChibaNEW
A timber corridor
Toyo Engineering’s new head office in Chiba is planned like an industrial plant: routes run through the floors the way piping carries energy round a plant.
Read the TOYO ENGINEERING office →
15 · TokyoNEW
Timber screens
JR East’s Tokyo Construction Project Management Office builds and rebuilds stations across Greater Tokyo.
Read the JR EAST office →
16 · Yodogawa, OsakaNEW
The timber room
An architecture practice in Osaka runs its own building from a farm shop on the ground floor to a theatre for three hundred and fifty on the seventh, with a school and a shared nursery in between.
Read the RUI SEKKEISHITSU office →
17 · Otemachi, TokyoNEW
The timber screen
A plastics trading company on a landmark Otemachi floor keeps the visitor route and the staff route apart, and finishes the staff end with a timber counter, a tiled wall and a row of red stools.
Read the MITSUI & CO. PLASTICS office →Questions
WALL has picked 17: ZOZO (Chiba), RAKSUL (Meguro, Tokyo), Rakuten (Futako-Tamagawa, Tokyo), ITOKI (Chuo, Tokyo), KAONAVI (Akasaka, Tokyo), NOMURA (Odaiba, Tokyo), SEMBA (Minato, Tokyo), FROMSOFTWARE (Kita-Shinjuku, Tokyo), PERSOL CAREER (Azabudai, Tokyo), NIHON SEKKEI (Toranomon, Tokyo), YANMAR (Chayamachi, Osaka), JAL (Shinagawa, Tokyo), LIXIL (Shinagawa, Tokyo), TOYO ENGINEERING (Chiba), JR EAST (Tokyo), RUI SEKKEISHITSU (Yodogawa, Osaka), MITSUI & CO. PLASTICS (Otemachi, Tokyo).
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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