This furniture design project is for the seminar house, which was newly established for the general printing company DNP, in Hakone town (Kanagawa prefecture) surrounded by rich nature.  The floor plan of a seminar house tends to be assemblage of closed rooms, but instead, we have planned seminar rooms connected by some terraces to form a large one-room like space.  To figure out how to arrange furniture in this “Collaboration Space” was our first challenge.  

We started from designing tables to match the necessity of various scale of seminars, ranging from a few attendees to a large group of attendees.  The concept is that lecturers or attendees will be able to accommodate the seminar situation, by taking advantage of  the shape of the table itself and also the way of arranging multiple tables, and the space will be more flexible to expand the range of usage.

In the process of study, I was sketching the image of continuing polygon tables, then the scenery of Japanese garden with “Tobiishi” (stepping stones) and “Nobedan” (paved pathway) came to my mind vaguely.  Unshaped stones are laid with some gaps in between, forming a “loose bundle/unit”.  This is how I interpreted the image of tables in the seminar zone. 

Finally, the table top was designed in modified trapezoid shape by slightly changing the length of each side of the rectangular top board.  Depending on the seating position at the table, the distance among attendees will be varying, and once tables are connected, this distance will be enlarged to bring liveliness to the ambience.  This design idea for the table led me to the design concept of the furniture including sofas in the lounge and benches in the terrace.  The furniture in this facility allows visitors to have easy access from every direction, 360 degree.