Japan’s best-designed offices — one company, one walkthrough
QUESTIONS › WHY DO JAPANESE OFFICES HAVE SO MANY LOCKERS?

Question · Working in Japan

Why do Japanese offices have so many lockers?

Because the desks no longer belong to anyone. When an office goes free address, everything that used to live in a drawer needs a home — and in Japan that home is a personal locker.

Lockers for free address
Lockers for free address

01 · The short answer

No fixed desk, so bags go in a locker

Expedia’s Tokyo office explains the whole system in one line: the work floor is free address, bags go into lockers, and everyone picks a seat each morning.

Lockers for free address
Lockers for free address

02 · A corridor of them

Deloitte Tohmatsu lines the route

At Deloitte Tohmatsu in Marunouchi a corridor of lockers serves the floor, because the desks are not assigned.

The lockers
The lockers

03 · A place to pause

SOLTY treats it as a threshold

SOLTY gives the lockers an area of their own. It is where people stop on the way in and on the way out — the moment the working day starts and ends.

The locker area
The locker area

04 · Built into the landscape

Marubeni I-DIGIO puts them on the DOCK

Marubeni I-DIGIO names each floor after a landscape — a garden, a dock, an island — and the lockers and booths are built into the fit-out of the floor called DOCK.

Lockers and booths on DOCK
Lockers and booths on DOCK

Offices in this answer

Walk through them

More questions

People also ask

OFFICEMILL — explore offices across Japan
Planning an office in Japan?The design and build firms behind the offices on WALL are listed on our Partners page.
SEE PARTNERS