Corporate HQ 2

Office / Roppongi Minato-ku Tokyo / 2012 / Completed, no longer extant

How to divide one large open office without building walls.

The interior of the head office of an advertising company. One large open workroom, with no partitions, is divided by a bookshelf that runs 52 metres in a single spiral. It stands 2,155 mm high in seven tiers, with a total shelf length of about 360 metres. The form of the shelf was generated from a set of rules – the starting position and direction, how far the run may swing as it extends, how it behaves as it nears a floor or a column – and one path was chosen from a large number of candidates. Because it never closes into a wall, sight lines and the sense of other people carry across the whole floor, while the groupings of desks stay apart.

SPACE

COMPUTATION

Combinations of the rules that generate the shelf. Thirty-two combinations from five rules switched on and off resolve into eight types

One of the generated candidates. The path in plan (left) and the shelf unfolded in elevation (below) — Combinations of the rules that generate the shelf. Thirty-two combinations from five rules switched on and off resolve into eight types

DATA

Location	Roppongi Minato-ku Tokyo
Programme	Office
Year	2012
Construction	C-Space / Zenko Sangyo
Bookshelf	About 52 m in a single spiral / 2,155 mm high / seven tiers, about 360 m of shelf in total
Photography	Kanta Ichikawa