Description

The Enix Corporation has made a name for itself in recent years with the development of computer software for video games. In the tightly interwoven urban fabric of Tokyo with its underground railway and multi-lane traffic on several levels, their headquarters’ new eleven-storey building presents its narrow side to the street, with a façade entirely of glass that gives a clear view of the two-storey office zones.

The high-ceilinged rooms equipped with group tables and monitors serve for formal or informal communication between teams of software developers composed of salaried employees and contractors. It is here that people engaged in creative work exchange ideas, derive inspiration and develop new concepts. Colourful Arne Jacobson chairs, the only spots of colour in a work environment dominated by black and white, signal the special character of these zones. In the adjoining open-plan offices organised in manageable spatial units by a clear ground plan design, the software specialists implement the ideas on their laptops. The contractors work at home or occupy workplaces on the lower floors reserved for them for the duration of their contracts. The software developers share the new building with the bookkeeping and accounting departments and the management, who are distributed through galleries overlooking the two-storey office zones.

Room temperatures are regulated by cold or warm air – depending on the time of year – carried above suspended perforated metal panel ceilings. Instead of external solar protection louvres, a curtain of air in front of the façades, fed by thermal tunnels, prevents overheating of the rooms in summer and reduces heat loss in winter. The storey-height glass façade lets daylight deep into the building. Fabric blinds on the inside controlled by daylight sensors provide protection from glare caused by direct sunlight.

Vibration from surface and subterranean traffic and from earthquakes required unusual construction strategies. The office zones, which are glazed on three sides and situated at the narrow sides of the building, are developed as protruding elements. The movement of the building is absorbed by the exposed structural frame, consisting of steel pipes pushed into each other so that they lengthen and shorten like telescopes. Against this background, the extensive glazing of the façade becomes a special feature. Flexibility determines the concept of the company in relation to both construction and content.

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Originally published in: Rainer Hascher, Simone Jeska, Birgit Klauck, Office Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2002.