JAPAN'S BEST-DESIGNED OFFICES
Concept
Built for collisions
Hakuhodo describes its office as a set of places where people meet by chance. A café joins an open floor designed to mix job types; a lounge welcomes media partners; a research unit invites the outside world in.
Even the desks follow the idea. In most areas the company uses what it calls fuzzy address — not fixed seats, not fully free seats, but a loose system that lets each person design their own way of working.
01 · Entrance & reception
Trophies at the front door
The office sits in Akasaka Biz Tower, straight off the station. Clients and partners are guided to a reception area where part of the company’s collection of advertising awards, from Japan and abroad, is on display.
02 · Biz Cafe & Magnet Floor
Coffee that starts projects
Biz Cafe sells coffee, smoothies and light meals, and staff of every department and every year of service gather here. The company says small talk here often turns into work.
The café opens onto the Magnet Floor, an open space anyone can use across team lines — designed to mix job types and start new ideas.
03 · Library
From ad theory to fashion magazines
The library holds far more than advertising books: fashion magazines and academic material sit on the same shelves. There is space to read quietly or to work somewhere calm.
04 · Lounge & workspace
A lounge for partners, desks by choice
The lounge is open to visitors from outside and is often used for meetings and chats with media partners. In the work areas, fuzzy address lets people choose how and where they work.
05 · Clinic & salon
Health and training in the building
“Good work comes from a healthy body”, the company says. An in-house clinic covers internal medicine, dentistry and psychosomatic medicine, from diagnosis to treatment and prescriptions.
The salon is where training happens, from new-employee programmes to seminars held through the year.
06 · University of Creativity
A research institute with open doors
UNIVERSITY of CREATIVITY studies and puts into practice creativity in many fields, from artificial intelligence to the SDGs. To create collisions between different kinds of creativity, it is open not only to staff but to people from outside.
