Symbolplus’ Tokyo office is fitted out almost entirely in red-earth plaster and handmade paper.
Symbolplus’s office in Tokyo occupies a timber-framed building by the architect Akio Hayashi, whose approach to the shell focused on natural materials, leaving the existing timber structure as intact as possible. Symbolplus took this existing condition as the brief, responding with a design that embraces two key materials: earthen plaster and handmade paper.
The approach of Symbolplus was for the new work to sit with the building rather than over it – matching the scale and warmth of the timber frame, and reading as part of the structure’s history rather than something laid on top of it. As such, the interiors work with the existing fabric.
A locally-made earthen plaster sets the backdrop: every wall is finished in a mix blended with red earth sourced from Ishikawa, on the Sea of Japan coast. Its colour matched to the warm tone of the timber, a mix that carries through to the exposed stair, which then moves across to the staff kitchen and bathroom.
The second material is Tosa Washi, a handmade Japanese paper more often used for calligraphy, printing and screens than for interiors. It’s normally considered too fragile to build sliding shoji screens, but Symbolplus has layered it until it made a structural element. The same paper makes movable partitions that let staff open the floor plate up or close parts of it off, and it’s been worked into ceiling panels that angle over the seating area.
Earth and paper are unconventional materials to use in an office environment, but it’s their naturalness that bring a softness to this interior.
CREDITS
Design: Symbolplus
Building architect: Akio Hayashi
Photography: Keishin Horikoshi
