Shukoh's renewed headquarters in Kawasaki is one of those projects that quietly challenge your assumptions. I visited it with the curiosity of someone who has designed and observed many "free address" offices in Japan. I came away with a simple conviction. The difference between a flexible office that works and one that fails is rarely a matter of furniture alone. It depends on culture, rules, and leadership. Shukoh shows how these three elements can align.

all photos by Shukoh

The company's story helps explain why. Shukoh Co., Ltd. was founded in 1941 and formally established in 1947. It has grown into a major player in Japan in furniture manufacturing, interior construction, and architectural hardware. Its expertise is not limited to corporate offices. Shukoh has ample experience supplying and designing fixtures for counter-based businesses, financial institutions, retail spaces, and specialized facilities where precision, durability, and maintenance are essential. This industrial background shapes how the company thinks about space. Shukoh does not treat interiors as temporary scenes. It treats them as systems that need to perform in time.Another characteristic feature is the international network of Shukoh. The company has established technical partnerships with over ten European and Italian manufacturers. This is not a symbolic link, it is a long-term relationship founded on common values. Shukoh has worked with prestigious brands such as Unifor and other European groups that embody a culture of quality, attention to detail and dedication to "good things used for a long time". The company calls on the industry to re-think "authentic" materials and "authentic" design. It criticizes reliance upon synthetic finishes that mimic quality. The argument is environmental, but also cultural. Shukoh argues for responsible materials, repairable systems, and thoughtful production cycles.
The company’s environmental agenda reinforces that view. Shukoh has created aluminum-based technologies to reduce plastic use and strengthen recycling and resource conservation. Its products rely on modular assemblies that can be repaired through component replacement rather than full disposal. This is sustainability grounded in engineering realism. It also links directly to workplace culture: the same principles—repairability, longevity, reduced waste—can guide organizational habits.

A natural extension of this philosophy is the OCEAN Project, Shukoh’s initiative to counter the “buy-and-discard” cycle that dominates much of the office furniture industry. Its message is simple and consistent with the company’s identity: use high-quality products for a long time, eliminate unnecessary waste, and return to a culture of authenticity. OCEAN encourages companies to repair, reuse, and maintain rather than replace at the first sign of deterioration. It is not only an environmental stance but a cultural repositioning—one that reframes sustainability as a daily practice rather than a marketing slogan. In this sense, OCEAN becomes another bridge between Shukoh’s manufacturing ethos and its vision for the workplace, a reminder that lasting systems require lasting values.
This is also where YYuta Sakuma enters the story. As President and the third generation of Shukoh’s leadership, he carries forward the legacy of a family-driven industrial company while simultaneously expanding its cultural horizon. His profile is both familiar and unusual. Familiar because he embodies the continuity and discipline typical of longstanding Japanese manufacturing firms. Unusual because his worldview has been shaped by direct international experience. He speaks Italian. He has worked in Italy. He has a genuine affection for bicycles and the lifestyle culture around them. These may seem like personal anecdotes, but in fact they reveal a broader mindset—one that blends Western and Eastern sensibilities, and one that sees the workplace not only as a technical environment but as a cultural and behavioral ecosystem.
Sakuma’s exposure to different rhythms of work and different ways of conceiving space helps explain why projects like OCEAN and the Kawasaki headquarters share the same underlying logic: an insistence on authenticity, responsibility, and longevity. Under his leadership, environmental ethics, design culture, and operational pragmatism converge into a single direction. It is this synthesis—quiet, clear, and deeply intentional—that makes Shukoh’s approach stand out.
What struck me most during our interview was not a single grand statement; rather, it was the calm clarity with which he connected everyday problems to spatial solutions. Renewal of the Kawasaki headquarters did not start as some fashionable pursuit of open space. It began as the pragmatic fatigue of the old office condition. The previous design and layout had remained essentially unchanged from 2007 until a couple of years ago. It was time to move forward. But the trigger was not only aesthetic; it was operational.
Sakuma described a key frustration. Too much time was being wasted on paper-based processes that no longer made sense in a digital era. The most emblematic example was expense accounting. The old system required manual reporting on a weekly basis. Employees would spend part of every Monday morning registering costs and movements. Multiply that time by dozens of people, week after week, and the waste becomes staggering. It is not the kind of inefficiency that appears in brochures. It is the kind that quietly erodes work quality.
The new office tackled this directly. Shukoh introduced a digital expense system supported by Mobile Suica functions and integrated company credit workflows. Each employee now tracks expenses through a smartphone-based process. This may sound like a simple administrative upgrade. But it is a foundational move in workplace design. When the accounting and documentation ecosystem becomes digital, the spatial consequences are immediate. The need for paper archives collapses. Cabinets and storage walls become less necessary. The office can breathe.
From my own projects, I have seen how paper reduction is many times stated as an intention rather than a reality. In fact, most clients declare an intention of "paperless," with the office ending up retaining large storage volumes because the transition was not successfully executed. What Shukoh teaches here is that the "paperless office" isn't a slogan but more about a decision at the systems level, which tools and rules have to support.
Which brings me to the bigger topic of free address. This has been the most fashionable of labels in Japanese office design since the COVID-19 era. One constantly hears it associated with narratives of flexibility, agile work, and hybrid models. In practice, however, I find a cultural obstacle that is difficult to surmount. Employees are reluctant to give up fixed desks. Invisible habits reassert themselves even in new open layouts. People try to get the same seat each day. Personal items remain. Storage units stay with the workstation. The office becomes "free address" on paper, "assigned" in reality.
What I often refer to as the resistance of the old model. It is not the employees' fault. It is a predictable response to uncertainty. Fixed desks are an identification with something stable. If an organization does not provide a structured alternative, people will default to what they know. Many projects fail precisely because they underestimate this psychological and cultural dimension.
Sakuma seems to have grasped this from the outset. His approach was not to force free address through design rhetoric. It was to dismantle the infrastructure that silently enables fixed behavior. A critical step was the removal of desk trolleys and personal pedestals. In many corporate environments, these mobile drawers are the hidden anchors of territorial attachment. Even when desks are technically shared, the presence of personal containers allows employees to preserve ownership. Sakuma was disarmingly direct on this point. If companies continue to keep these elements, he argued, they are not truly changing the system. They are simply rebranding it.
Refreshing honesty, perhaps, but one that also begins to undermine the commercial logic of mainstream office manufacturing. Free address concepts are zealously promoted by most large suppliers, yet they continue to sell the components - desk trolleys, personal pedestals and storage units - that preserve personal attachment. As both a manufacturer and a design-driven company, Shukoh was uniquely placed to challenge this contradiction. This lack of desk trolleys was not some innocent spatial decision; it was a strategic stance.
In place of desk-based storage, each employee received a personal locker. This is one of the simplest and most effective moves in a truly flexible office. The daily ritual changes: people arrive, open their locker, take out laptops and personal items, and head to the workstation they will choose that day. The bags and jackets do not find their place under the desks or scattered on chairs. The office becomes more visually calm and functionally more clear.
The workstation layout reinforces this logic. The previous linear arrangement gave way to a 120-degree configuration. The result is spatial variety and a more nuanced balance between proximity and privacy. This is important because free address often fails when the open plan becomes too generic. If every desk looks and feels identical, people seek stability by occupying the same position. But if the layout offers subtle differences in orientation and atmosphere, movement becomes more natural.

Shukoh also introduced a savvy zoning strategy based on activity and tone. The concept revolves around three key words: communication, concentration, imagination. These aren't just abstract values displayed on a wall. They inform the spatial palette. Areas associated with dialogue and exchange are distinguished from zones dedicated to focused work. The use of color helps anchor these roles without turning the office into a themed environment. In an office where people change seats regularly, these cues are essential. They help create a shared mental map that replaces personal territory.

Perhaps the most memorable design expression is the semicircular workstation configuration that integrates individual positions with a central round table. The concept is simple and brilliant. Seated facing forward, each person gains a sense of personal focus. Rotating the chair immediately sends the employee into collaborative mode with colleagues around the shared center. Geometry becomes a behavioral switch. A good example of how micro-design decisions shape macro-culture.
The numbers behind the project are equally telling. The new office significantly reduced the number of desks compared to the number of employees, accepting that full occupancy is no longer a constant requirement. In my experience, many companies in Japan still insist on a strict one-to-one ratio between staff and desks, a practice that often produces oversized and underused offices. Shukoh embraces a different logic. A modest reduction in fixed infrastructure translates into meaningful operational savings and, at the same time, allows for a more generous and comfortable experience at the workstations that remain.
Importantly, the project is not dogmatic. Shukoh retained fixed stations where security and operational sensitivity require it. Accounting is one example. Specialized CAD or Revit stations are another. These setups are accessible on rotation, and Sakuma even described the possibility of remote control and usage from home. This hybrid logic-flexible where possible, fixed where necessary-feels like a mature interpretation of free address. It avoids the ideological trap of trying to make everything uniform.
Meeting culture was also restructured. Instead of paying back the openness by adding a lot of enclosed rooms, Shukoh reduced the number of meeting rooms and changed the significance of the meeting itself. Informal discussions happen around sample libraries and reference walls. Standing meetings are encouraged. Formal meetings are few and set within a strong weekly rhythm. Sakuma was once more blunt. He does not like Japanese tendency to engage too many people for meetings that do not need them. His response was not to negotiate endlessly. It was to change expectations and enforce a new discipline.
This point reflects something I have observed repeatedly in my years designing workplaces in Japan: unless an organization changes its meeting culture, no spatial reform can achieve its full impact. Open-plan offices are often criticized for causing interruptions and loss of focus, but these issues arise mainly when time structures and decision-making habits stay the same. Shukoh understood this. The office is not simply a container for a new layout; it is a platform for new operational behaviors.
The workday schedule reinforces this same direction. Shukoh pushes a rhythm based on earlier hours. The standard working day runs roughly from 8:00 to 16:30, with controlled extension to approximately 18:00 at the maximum. This is a powerful cultural message in a country where overtime is still commonly equated with a badge of loyalty. Sakuma frames wellbeing as a structural part of performance. Concentration is best when the mind is fresh. Communication and coordination come later in the day.
Looking at the Kawasaki headquarters as a whole, I think its success is in the sequence rather than in any isolated feature: Digitalization reduces paper. Paper reduction removes the need for storage. Storage moves from desks to lockers. Desk identity dissolves. Layout and zoning support movement. Rules prevent backsliding. Meeting culture is disciplined. Work hours become more sustainable. The system becomes coherent and this is a rare coherence. Most free-address offices appear new but act old. Shukoh is different because it treats free address as an organizational architecture. The design doesn't just make the possibility of flexibility available. It makes flexibility the easiest route.

The takeaway for designers and clients stepping into the post-COVID office landscape is transparent. Free address cannot succeed by declaration alone. It requires the stripping away of contradictory infrastructures, a crystalline narrative around why this matters, and leadership stance both gradual and firm. By default, people will resist change. Through system design, the new routine must be easier than the old one. Shukoh seems to have hit that inflection point.

As I left the office, I thought about how many workplace projects fail not because the idea is wrong but because the execution stops halfway. Shukoh’s Kawasaki headquarters shows the opposite. Its innovation is quiet, precise, and consistent—sustained by leadership that treats the new culture as something real, not symbolic. In a workplace landscape saturated with fashionable terms and quick fixes, Shukoh goes back to what truly matters: reducing waste, rejecting superficial notions of flexibility, and building systems designed to endure. Design behaviors, not just desks. This is why the Kawasaki headquarters is more than a successful renovation; it is a small but meaningful blueprint for how Japanese open-plan offices can finally become truly free.