JAPAN'S BEST-DESIGNED OFFICESConcept
One curve, and a colour with a name
The brief is four words of Japanese — tsunagari musubitsuku, connected and bound together — and the plan answers it with a single move. The corridor that runs through the middle of the floor is not straight. It curves, gently, and the company says it was designed on the image of a bridge.
That is the whole idea, and everything else is consistent with it. The colour throughout is a pale violet the company calls grace lavender, which is its corporate colour and which appears on the chairs, the carpet and the walls of the conference room. At the ends of the bridge are the rooms that are not work: a communication space, a conditioning space with a mat and a ball on the floor, a Japanese room laid in tatami with a raised platform, and a counter bar. A trading company that connects suppliers to buyers has built itself a corridor that does the same thing.
01 · The entrance
White, with flowers
The entrance is a white wall carrying the company name, with flowers set in front of it and a dark line running the width of the room.
02 · The floor, and the bridge
A corridor that bends
The working floor is open desking in pale lavender and grey. Through the middle of it runs the central corridor, curved rather than straight, which the company designed on the image of a bridge.
03 · Meeting
From a table by the window to a room in lavender
The meeting spaces begin as tables set against the glass and end in a conference room finished in the corporate colour, with the CLASSE Room alongside.
04 · Communication and conditioning
Two ways of not being at a desk
The communication space is a room of loose tables and chairs with daylight on two sides. The conditioning space is furnished with a mat, a ball and a screen, and kept clear.
05 · The Japanese room and the bar
Shoes off, then a drink
A tatami room with a raised platform sits at one end of the floor; at the other, a counter bar with stools and pendant lights.
