Tokyo Office Emphasizes Perforation in Interior Design

Tokyo office space by Japanese studio Daisuke architecture and design (DDAA) designs a modern work environment with perforated furniture and fixtures for DAQ, an iphone accessories company.

The office was originally a french restaurant converted into a small start-up space. A black perforated partition serves as a divider in this open floor plan away from the cluster of smaller rooms. The other rooms include a company meeting room and an executive’s office. The  designers came up with this idea as a way to allow natural light to flow in illuminating the entire office equally for its 24 employees.

Designer Daisuke Motogi’s goal was to prevent a typical or “monotonous” layout, seen in many open office environments. In which “each seat is differentiated solely by the amount of sunlight it receives.” However, the seat designs vary each with its own distinct characteristics and level of privacy.

While all of the seats face towards the windows, some of the seats are solely designed for sitting down and are placed directly in front of the window offering a view of the outdoors while others are tall standing desks where employees can work standing up or sitting down on a high stool. The different types of seats and desks allow employees the option of individual concentration and working alone while others allow for social and group engagement.

The spaces for private work are typical of a cubicle or a manga cafe design seen in Japan and other areas. These private areas use soft partitions made of felt with zippers along the corner edges to keep the fabric from loosening. Inside of each cubicle there are pockets designed to hold A4-size documents and a task light. A task light is a fixture that is easily adjustable similar to a reading light because it can be clipped to a belt which is also attached to partitions.

Aside from the functionality of the design, the perforation seen on the chairs and partition speak on the nature of the work environment and the products the iphone accessories company sells. DAQ is known for their products made of perforated mesh material.

These perforations express the corporate identity on both a spatial scale and artistic level. Perforation transmits air and light, alleviating the confined condition of the executive room and meeting room. In addition to their aesthetics, they are large enough to insert round pegs used as door handles and also as shelf dowels, making it easy for employees to arrange shelving anywhere in the office.