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Office designed for the unclumsy

By Rain Noe - March 7, 2008

in Object Culture

This Nendo-designed office space in Tokyo is divided by a series of low-dipping partitions you have to step over...like you're in a submarine. Was it designed for flooding? To stymie Roombas? Prevent rollerblading? According to the designers,

We wanted the usual spaces and functions--meeting space, management, workspace and storage--to be separate, but also to maintain a sense of connection between them.

To achieve this effect, we divided the space with walls that seem to sag and flop like a piece of cloth held up between two hands, enclosing the various spaces more than the usual office dividers, but less than actual walls.

Employees can move between spaces by walking over the parts of the walls that "sag" the most, thus emphasizing the contrast between the uses of the different spaces.

Spaces that need more sound-proofing are enclosed with the kind of plastic curtains you might find at a small factory so that people can work without worrying about noise but not feel isolated. When you stand up and look through the whole space, people, shelves and plants seem to appear and disappear as though floating between the waves.

Perhaps it was also intended to weed out potentially clumsy employees: if you trip during the job interview, "We'll keep your resume on file."

via dezeen

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jenzie

16 years ago

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It looks like a crappy 2D version of the Viktor & Rolf store.
If they had for one second thought about people in wheel chairs (which they should have if they call them self professionals) that shit never would have been made.

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joe

16 years ago

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seriously though, wheelchairs. someone already said that? okay, but now try it with more moral indignation.
marginalization of the handicapped = 1
designers = 0
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shibo

16 years ago

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I don't really like it.
Maybe the ceiling is too low or something? those partitions look annoying to me...
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Peggy

16 years ago

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Absolutely ridiculous doorways, I wouldn't fancy having to tackle those if the building had to be evacuated quickly, say due to a fire perhaps or terrorist attack.
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Chirstopher

16 years ago

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this is ugly, impractical and ridiculous. stop it.
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greg.org

16 years ago

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amazing, it's exactly the kind of obtuse design that I thought was disappearing from Japan, where there has been a decade-plus campaign to integrate disabled and wheelchair citizens into society, not stick them, invisible, in a home.

That said, you have to step over raised sliding door threshholds all the time in traditional bldgs, so it's not an unknown concept.
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Jason

16 years ago

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Wheelchair access, anyone? Guess you never know, maybe the building itself weeds out the wheelchair users before they can even make it in to the office.
Otherwise, it looks good to me.
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michael bailey

16 years ago

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I guess that these people have never met a blind person!
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Avi

16 years ago

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I have to say that while it works aesthetically, in the end of the day I think the same effect could have been achieved without giving people something to trip over. I can just imagine the law suit possibilities...not exactly the most accessible design either.
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michael bailey

16 years ago

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I guess that they will never have employees (or clients)that depend on a wheelchair
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pumpgrrl

16 years ago

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um, and none of our employees will ever be on crutches or use wheelchairs!
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