Designer Insights: The Future of Offices
Vol.6 Finding the ‘Individual’ within the Office: The Role of Design Furniture
Unglazed porcelain created by mixing in iron: matte with a sense of light and shade for a novel look
At their 2024 new product launch event, Uchida Yoko highlighted “expanding concentration and refreshment spaces” as one of its key themes. The company is known for their expertise in connecting IT systems with a wide range of roles and tasks and doing comprehensive office planning. They are also responding to emerging trends in increasingly open office environments, such as enabling the kind of deep focus required by not only administrative but also development and research roles and offering privacy in the workplace.
Among the new products introduced is the CO-Creation desk system from the American company Steelcase, distributed by Uchida Yoko, announced for the Japanese and Asian markets. The system can be customised with various components to create individual work environments suited to various roles. In long-standing tradition, Japanese offices have been organised in island layouts planned around a supervisor. This design shatters that convention while embracing the concept of personal desks.
Also worth noting from Uchida Yoko is ELMAR, one of their furniture products focused on concentration and relaxation and released in 2023. Created by the late, beloved designer Taiji Fujimori, who passed away unexpectedly in 2023, this system furniture makes effective use of short pieces and mill ends of domestic oak. It brings a warm, forest-like atmosphere to office spaces that can often feel cold.
The ELMAR brand started from a wooden chair with a flexible backrest. It offers calm, modest designs that could easily fit into home settings as well, such as simple desks.
Satoshi Yamada of Uchida Yoko’s office product planning department worked on developing the line. He explains that large tables still present issues with materials and the strength of the table. This led to the idea of simply combining several desks. When the desks are placed close together, gaps naturally form between the solid wood tops.
It is possible to put the gaps to use by running wires through them or setting up extension leads, but what’s interesting here is the possibility to put in wooden desktop panels to create partitions. At 35 cm, the cozy wooden partitions have just the right height to allow eye contact while keeping work at the desk out of view.
Partitions are often made of acrylic, or they are completely isolating, but this one creates an individual space in a warm, kind way. The way it playfully calls to mind an upright chopping board also plays a role in this. The design reflects Fujimori’s personality.
“The way a desk is utilised is something that each worker must envision and shape for themselves”, Yamada says.
