Cookpad Ikejiri Office

Following Cookpad’s relocation, this project set out not to optimise efficiency or reorganise functions, but to support, through architecture, situations in which people and activities naturally overlap within the flow of everyday work, allowing unexpected conversations and events to occur.

The existing office building in Ikejiri already possessed contrasting spatial characteristics: a ground floor that opens directly onto the street, and basement and upper floors whose interiors are less visible from outside. Rather than treating these differences as a simple functional hierarchy, the project reinterprets them as conditions that allow shifts in behaviour and relationships. The coexistence of spaces close to the city and more inward-looking, calm environments introduces multiple degrees of distance within the office as a whole.

Placed across these differing conditions is the kitchen. Here, it is not conceived as a welfare facility or a break space, but as a reason for people to stop, linger, and find themselves sharing the same place. Cooking itself is not the primary objective. What matters is that people gather, paths cross, and conversations begin without clear intent. The kitchen accommodates moments that are not fully defined by purpose, allowing informal interactions to take place as part of everyday work.

Uses are deliberately not over-prescribed. The mix of people changes throughout the day, and encounters occur between individuals who might otherwise have had little contact. These small coincidences, repeated over time, gradually reshape relationships within the organisation and contribute to the ongoing evolution of its culture.

What this project seeks is not an office whose mode of use is fixed at the moment of completion. Instead, it aims to sustain an environment that continues to leave room for “something to happen” as it is inhabited and used over time.