Frontoffice office Tokyo


60 m2
Team: Mizuzu Yoshikawa, Joris Berkhout, Koen Klinkers, Will Galloway, Ana Ilic
Status: Built, 2013

A hacked space, with a twist. Originally a two story house built during the post-war reconstruction boom in Tokyo, by 2010 the building was subdivided into a series of rooms for rent on the second floor and a cafe on the ground floor. With redevelopment in the future a certainty it was most sensible to make space by subtraction rather than addition. We removed all interior walls on both floors, covered a hidden stair in the centre of the building, and added structural braces where necessary, to string together suitably large spaces on each floor.

Most of the columns remained for structural purposes but these offered incentive to rethink how a building could be addressed when the starting point was modification, not perfection. In practice, spaces remained undefined and functions shifted continuously to reflect projects and project groups. We hosted large groups of visitors for events and lectures, held late-night dinner parties, and occasionally turned the room into a workshop.

Leaving room for the unexpected is a good way to plan an architectural office.