JAPAN'S BEST-DESIGNED OFFICES
Concept
Strong individuals, and the places they collide
The company starts from a sentence about itself: Mitsui & Co. is a firm where strong individuals create business themselves. In an age when anyone can reach information and anyone can reach anyone, it argues, trustworthy real experience and real contacts are worth more, not less.
The office is described as the equipment for that — a place where the individual sets off an intellectual chemical reaction with colleagues inside and outside the company, and where a floor is built to be moved around rather than sat in.
01 · The buildings
Two, of different character
The head office sits across two buildings in Otemachi. The Mitsui & Co. Building faces the Imperial Palace and takes its design from the palace and its moat. Otemachi One Tower, which also holds a hotel, is the urban one.
02 · The great stair
From the subway up
A void runs from the second basement to the ground floor with a great stair inside it, carrying people from the subway concourse into the office entrance and the shops.
03 · The hall
Conferences, and concerts
A multi-purpose hall was planned to strengthen the international standing of the Otemachi–Marunouchi–Yurakucho district. It is designed to take anything from an international conference to classical, jazz and pop.
04 · Meeting rooms
Shapes, finishes, furniture, wiring
The meeting rooms vary in shape, interior, furniture and IT so that different kinds of meeting have somewhere that fits them.
05 · The snack spaces
The idea, in furniture
On each working floor, a space near the stairs is given over to coffee, juice and nuts. The company is explicit about why: so that individuals cross the boundary of their own organisation and set off that chemical reaction.
06 · Work floors and canteen
Move, rather than sit
Staff are expected to move around the floor according to what the work and the team need. The canteen is good and comfortable, and outside mealtimes it is used for meetings and solo work as well.
