Small, comfortably homelike offices are becoming an emerging typology to counteract the alienation of long working hours in huge headquarter complexes.
So far many poor office buildings – in Japanese jargon pencil buildings- hosted employees of medium to small size companies.
Y HEADQUARTERS BUILDING sets itself apart from this category because of few key reasons:
1. it belongs to a small company catering for high quality services: it therefore requires multiple individual spaces where each worker may concentrate;
2. on the other hand it requires transparency and overall permeability to encourage human relations;
This refined headquarter hosts 15 employees and is located in a residential district of downtown Tokyo. It is a composition of two volumes facing each other across a sunken garden. The block on the right hand side faces a street junction and is used as an interface with the public; the one on the left contains the workstations. The two volumes overlook onto a central void through entirely glazed facades; this helps remarkably to set a visual communication between employees and customers and visitors.
Photo credit: Satoshi Shigeta
View Original