nendo's office is located near the Meguro River in Tokyo, on the fifth
floor of an old office building. We wanted the usual spaces and
functions -meeting space, management, workspace and storage- to be
separate, but also to maintain a sense of connection between them. To
achieve this effect, we divided the space with walls that seem to sag
and flop like a piece of cloth held up between two hands, enclosing the
various spaces more than the usual office dividers, but less than actual
walls. Employees can move between spaces by walking over the parts of
the walls that "sag" the most, thus emphasizing the contrast between the
uses of the different spaces. Spaces that need more sound-proofing are
enclosed with the kind of plastic curtains you might find at a small
factory so that people can work without worrying about noise but not
feel isolated. When you stand up and look through the whole space,
people, shelves and plants seem to appear and disappear as though
floating between the waves.