In spring 2021, AQ had an all-hands workshop about our Tokyo office. The mothership was no longer getting the kind of human presence that makes a space feel alive and loved. The air felt stale and the post-box overflowed with pizza flyers. With the days of a regular commute to a central location behind us, we recognized it was time to reimagine the role of the studio space in our design practice.
By the end, two things had become clear.
First, constrained to the home, each of us were seeking spaces that support changes in modes of work or thought, with some of the affordances of working from a café, from a friend’s house, or from a different city. More subtly, we were yearning to gather, to be able to convene in celebration of us, and to have access to a sanctuary, shielded from the friction of daily life in the city.