Look! Reverse Arch Doorway Offices

With doorways similar to those found on submarines, the offices at the Toyko design company Nendo evoke the shapes of draped cloth or even ocean waves...

"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," says Nendo, "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."

We love the upside down effect, but we'd definitely warn visitors to "watch their step".

[via Dezeen]

Comments (19)

Cool and everything, but what happened to accessibility? Hmm...

I guess they don't have anybody working there who uses a wheelchair. Or customers who use wheelchairs. Or employees or customers who use walkers or have mobility issues in general.

Gosh. I guess I couldn't work there.

That's a waste of good plywood. Are there no wheelchair-bound people in Tokyo?

I could just see carrying a pile of boxes/files and just getting your heel caught on that plywood- oops.

I'm shocked the fire marshall would approve this.

Don't people trip over the doorways?

close but no cigar.
screams potential lawsuit.
nice idea but shouldn't have been executed so literally.
I can imagine horrible tripping and gashing injuries!

Yeah - it wouldn't have been hard to invert the arches while keeping the access open.

never mind wheelchairs, what about something as basic as someone spraining their ankle and using crutches? Or what about the fact that half this office is going to break their kneecaps/wrists every time they trip over a doorway?

I feel like this same visual effect could have been achieved if they'd just visually let the bottom of the doorway arches dip below the floor. As it stands, this seems design seems... mean.

I would trip 3-5x per day. Double that on Mondays.

It just looks like bad set design. The rooms also seem boring and uninspiring. They'd be better off dropping a few desks in a warehouse. I'd hate to work there.

I really like it, even though it would never fly in the US, for all the reasons mentioned above.

But if you ever go to Tokyo, look really carefully for someone who's handicapped, mobility impaired, or in a wheelchair. You'll be shocked to discover that you just will not see people who fits this description. As for lawsuit potential - what an American idea!

Elizabeth - are you saying there are no handicapped people in Tokyo or that Tokyo has made it virtually impossible for those people to be mobile on their own?

I have a feeling it is the latter and those people are left to stay at home and be cared for by a family member or something.

In the US we have ADA laws to protect those people and that while they can not walk, are still perfectly good productive members of society.

It is a sad fact that any kind of disability is not as accepted and catered to in Japan as it is here in the US. That's just how it is. I worked in a Japanese highschool and despite students getting injuries from sports, there were no elevators and very few easy access ramps. I'm not surprised that this aspect of design thinking, while natural and necessary for Americans, was absent in the Nendo office design. However, I still admire their innovation and willing to do something "different" for their office environment.

I guess they don't have a "JDA".

The accessibility issues aside, it would have been better aesthetics to have the arches 'sunken' into the floor. It would have given the partitions a sense of permanence that the design badly needs. Also, I think I would have arranged the window-like arches to be more staggered. I think it would look more purposeful, more designed, if every partition wasn't identical.

That's a lawsuit just waiting to happen.

That's nothing a disgruntled employee with a jig-saw can't fix.

I think it's nauseating.

The comments are odd.
When I looked at the pictures, I assumed these were the walls, and that there were doors outside of the viewing range. I don't think that everyone is meant to walk through that.