The Itoki in-house design team realized the new offices for the furniture manufacturing company located in Tokyo, Japan. Itoki is one of the major office furniture manufacturers in Japan and is a workplace design professional. Based on the pioneer spirit Itoki has inherited since its founding in 1890, they state their mission statement as “We design tomorrow. We design WORK-style.”.

In December 2018, Itoki established a new HQ, named ITOKI TOKYO XORK, by gathering four sites and relocating into one. The term XORK is coined to express the evolving the workstyle to the next level, with the way the “W” in “WORK” is replaced with “X”, to showcase the next letter in the alphabet.

Itoki’s new HQ is designed and integrated with two concepts. One is for the office to empower employees with trust and choice in order to increase productivity and creativity through the adoption of Activity Based Working (ABW). Itoki has collaborated with Veldhoen + Company, the founders of ABW with over 30 years of experience and expertise, to jointly develop the workplace that incorporates ABW as the holistic work-style strategy.

The entire office is designed following the ABW principles with variations of relevant settings available for employees to choose from, based on their specific activities throughout the day.

There is a large café space which brings everyone in the office together including customers, mind-fitness space for meditation, and an internal staircase to promote movement and support ad-hoc encounters between various employees/teams.

The adoption of ABW implies not only a physical space change but also a change in mindset, behaviors, leadership style and ways of working. Itoki used a mix of classroom sessions, workshops, and e-learning modules in order to support the employees through the change.

In addition, digital workflow and IT devices were deployed to align with the ABW concept to be paper independent. Itoki has developed its own app where employees can share location information with their team members using GPS and geomagnetic sensors.

With regard to WELL certification acquisition, Itoki used its own Greengard Gold certified products to reduce VOC emission and maintain clean air in the office. Additionally, more than 60% of workstations feature adjustable height standing desks so that workers can work in more healthy and comfortable way.

Itoki is not only going to continuously monitor progress and keep evolving its workstyle, but also to utilize their experience and knowledge obtained through the implementation of the new way of working at ITOKI TOKYO XORK for their customers who are trying to reform their workstyle.