Located at the premises of a former Shōwa-era hospital, an independent, fine arts focused bookstore and co-owned work space opened in 2019 and quickly gained the attention of young Tokyoites.

In 2020, we were asked to redesign one of the former medical examination rooms within the bookstore into an office / lounge. Facing a limited budget and small space less than 13 sqm large with very few attractive original features, it was soon clear the solution had to be radically transformative yet cheap and simple to implement. 

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Taking investor’s business focus – theater – as a starting point in the design process, we came up with an idea of scenography influenced, stage like spatial setting.

A new, seemingly independent elliptical monolithic volume of shelves is inserted in the room, forming a place within a space; a surprisingly spacious void which gives the room clear organizational logic and entirely new identity. By rotating this volume off the central axis of the room, two distinct conditions emerge.

First practical: pockets of small surplus space at the corners provide room for seating and give users an unusual sensation of observing the space from the outside, establishing an intimate yet open layout for informal meetings.

Second condition is experiential: two distinct symmetries of the room and the elliptical volume with mutually rotated central axis lead to new spatial dynamic.

In simple terms, it provides an element of excitement: when entering a room from the otherwise pragmatic interiors of the hospital, one immediately knows there is something different about it, while still being able to read the original dimensions and orientation. 

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