JAPAN'S BEST-DESIGNED OFFICESConcept
A software company inside a food company
Nippon Ham Systems Solutions is the IT arm of a group better known for sausage and baseball, and the office keeps saying so quietly. In Tokyo the meeting rooms are signposted by number — 10, 11 — and each numeral is drawn with a food motif tucked into it. It is the sort of detail nobody has to do, and it tells a visitor in one glance whose building this is.
The two offices are both on a 14th floor, in Umeda and in Osaki, and the company describes both in the same terms: glass, light, and as few walls as the work allows. The Osaka meeting rooms sit four floors higher, on 18, where the window gives the whole of Umeda.
01 · Osaka, the entrance
Glass, and a welcome
The head office occupies the 14th floor of Breeze Tower in Umeda. The company describes the floor as bright and glass-walled, with security handled at the building line, and the entrance is where visitors are met.
02 · The 18th floor
Meeting rooms over Umeda
Four floors above the working floor, the meeting rooms look out over the Umeda skyline. One is arranged for standing work, another as a low-table discussion space.
03 · Tokyo, the reception
The group front desk
The Tokyo office is on the 14th floor of ThinkPark Tower, two minutes from Osaki station along the pedestrian deck, in a building the company notes is often used for television filming. The floor carries the Nippon Ham group’s general reception.
04 · The signs
Numbers with something in them
Each Tokyo meeting room is given a number, and each number is drawn with a food motif worked into it — a reminder, on the way in, of what the group actually makes.
05 · The working floor
Wide windows, open desks
The Tokyo working floor is open, with wide windows looking down over the city, and a refresh room off to one side.
