JAPAN'S WORKPLACES
Concept
Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer
One of Amazon’s stated goals is to be “Earth’s Best Employer”. In Meguro that reads as an office that handles many ways of working and looks after body and mind — and, just as visibly, as playfulness: a cardboard dinosaur, a bouldering wall, meeting rooms named after rivers and music. Nothing here is stiff, and the design counts on a smile to loosen up creative work.
01 · Reception
Rivers of the world, rivers of Japan
Floors 5 and 6 of the Annex hold the visitor meeting rooms. The 5th-floor lounge is dark-toned but warm, and the wall carries Amazon’s mission in full: to be Earth’s most customer-centric company. The meeting rooms are named after rivers — the Danube and the Mekong on 5, the Shinano and the Ishikari on 6 — a theme that changes floor by floor, so visitors keep discovering things.
Every room has a large whiteboard, because ideas here are written down and argued over immediately. And every room has a folding helmet: a Japanese precaution that extends disaster readiness to guests as well as staff.
Look up in some rooms and you will see a door desk hanging from the ceiling. In Amazon’s first year Jeff Bezos bought a door at a hardware store, put legs on it and used it as a desk because it was cheaper than a desk. The door desk became the company’s symbol of frugality; a Door Desk Award still goes to staff whose ideas save money.
02 · Meeting rooms
An airport on the 14th floor
The internal meeting floor on Arco Tower 14 is about 100 metres long from north to south, so the designers made it an airport: the corridor is the runway, and the 24 rooms open off it through gates marked NORTH and SOUTH.
03 · Cafeteria & events
A bouldering wall, a dinosaur and three cafeterias
On the top floor, 19, the first thing you see is a 3.8-metre bouldering wall — the right half reserved for the company climbing club, the left for beginners, shoes lent on request. Behind it is the Dinosaur Space, named for the cardboard dinosaur that has peered round the door since the office opened. The 120-seat seminar room Opera has coloured chairs and door desks on the ceiling; the rooms on this floor are named after music — rock, samba, jazz, techno. The biggest room, Everest on Annex 16, seats 180 under a wall of city skylines: Tokyo Tower and the Skytree next to the Space Needle and Big Ben.
Three cafeterias feed the buildings. Café a2z — “A to Z”, the store that sells everything — does burgers, curry, a salad bar and vegan dishes. 3ma, named after the rakugo story “Meguro no sanma”, is a Japanese-style canteen with a view of the cherry trees along the Meguro river. Even the lifts join in: they are dressed as Amazon cardboard boxes, with a QR code that opens the store.
04 · Welfare
A room for almost every need
The other thing Meguro is known for is how many rooms exist for life outside work: an exercise studio for yoga, the bouldering wall, a prayer room open to any faith, a mothers’ room with sofa, fridge and microwave, a quiet room for short naps, a massage room and massage chairs, a health station for anyone feeling unwell, and showers. The list is long on purpose: it is what “everyone can work here” looks like in floor plan.
