CyberZ — Creative Factory: an office with the largest esports studio in Japan attached

Concept

An advertising company that built a television station

CyberZ sells smartphone advertising, which is a business conducted almost entirely in spreadsheets. It also runs a streaming platform, which is a business conducted in front of cameras. The office holds both, and the seam between them is visible.

One half is a normal Tokyo office — security gates, a corridor of digital signage, an open working floor, a café counter run with a coffee roaster, a lounge with a bird mural across the wall. The other half is broadcast infrastructure: a studio with a lit stage and a bank of screens, a control room, a green screen room green on three sides, a commentary booth, a dressing room with a mirror and bulbs round it. The company describes the studio as the largest in Japan dedicated to esports, and the part that is worth noticing is that it is not somewhere else. It is down the corridor from the desks.

01 · The entrance

Gates, and signage

The office is entered through security gates with a wall of monitors above them, then along a corridor lined with digital signage.

02 · Academy and the café

The room in the middle

Academy sits at the centre of the office and takes seminars, morning meetings and breaks in turn. The café beside it is run with a coffee roaster and serves at a discount.

03 · The working space

Desks, and a wall of screens

The working floor is open desking. Along one side runs a wall of monitors; the meeting rooms are panelled in timber, and a white corridor connects the two halves of the building.