Designer Insights: The Future of Offices
Vol.10 ITOKI’s Bold Experiment: Reimagining Offices and Factories as a Design House
First floor: co-creation with outside partners
Upon entering, I am greeted by a floor where disassembled furniture parts are displayed like museum pieces. This is a place to “open up and communicate” ITOKI’s manufacturing philosophy. When I visited, parts of the new chair mentioned earlier were on display, and the space has been used as an exhibition area since then as well.
The floors, walls and ceilings feature a grid. On the walls are written the standard dimensions of office chairs and cabinets – results of ITOKI’s research – as well as standard data on the human body.
Adjacent to the manufacturing facilities, there is also a testing room where workers measure chair durability from behind windows. There is also a space displaying ITOKI’s iconic products to date, highlighting company identity to both employees and visitors.
Second floor: internal co-creation area
The second floor serves primarily as an internal co-creation floor where members from design and development teams hold discussions and evaluate products.
In addition to meeting rooms and an open kitchen, there is an ergonomics lab, including a studio where the relationship between human movement and chairs can be measured and logged as data with the help of mixed reality (MR).
Particularly impressive is how the studio uses MR to link Tokyo, where the planning division is based, with the production division in Shiga. Spaces where the furniture is expected to be used can be projected onto the walls of the studio, allowing teams to check scale and compatibility with interiors. This reduces the number of prototype units that need to be manufactured and shipped, while helping confirm how well pieces match their intended interiors.
This development floor and the factory’s manufacturing site are easily accessible from one another, making it possible to check issues raised during meetings quickly and directly on the factory floor. Work here proceeds at this kind of close physical distance.
“Rather than simply making and selling products, ITOKI is a company that provides working environments. This was essential for that purpose. It also improves the quality and speed of development”, President Minato emphasises.