Yokogawa Electric — Musashino: a business-development office built on the SECI model, with walls you can write on

Concept

Hatch

The office puts the SECI model into practice. It aims for a comfortable space full of devices for serendipity, where ideas “hatch”.

Around a bright open stair, the work area lets people feel the four processes: socialization, externalization, combination and internalization.

01 · Materials

Wood you touch every day

Large tables are finished in many kinds of wood, rarely used in offices because of durability — in the hope that even the material you touch each day leads to a meeting or an idea. Writable walls and tabletops are everywhere.

02 · Places

Choose, then customise

People do not only choose a place; they reshape it on the spot. A call centre shows the time at each site; managers sit at a round sit-stand table so people drop by; and lights tell you from across the office that a meeting space is in use.

03 · Gathering

A café and a raised floor

The café is the symbolic area, meant to fill with conversation. At the main entrance is a high counter, and a raised koagari floor lets people take off their shoes for a meeting.

04 · Rooms

Six initials spell amnimo

Meeting rooms differ in specification, there is a one-to-one area for up to four, and the initials of six meeting rooms together spell the company name, amnimo. A lab area is kept low so the eye carries to the back.