Uniqlo Is Rethinking Japanese Work Culture–Through Office Design

Designed by Allied Works Architecture, the new headquarters of Fast Retailing–Uniqlo’s parent company–features open-plan office spaces, lounges done up with plants to resemble outdoor gardens, a library filled with books and magazines from around the world, and a room with stadium seating where all 1,200 employees can gather for company functions. While it bears the hallmarks of what we expect creative offices to look like in the West, it’s actually a first for corporate Japan.

The Silicon Valley-style office–open-plan work spaces, food on-site, communal lounge areas–has become common in many industries. It has also been exported to Westernized countries around the world as companies believe this type of design encourages its employees to become more creative, more productive, and happier. One holdout? Japan, which maintains a traditional work culture at the corporate level.

When Fast Retailing decided to build its new headquarters, it took a gamble on the Silicon Valley model in hopes that it would unleash more creativity in employees, and, in turn, make the business stronger and more competitive. The new office opened this year–will it work?

In 2013, Tadashi Yanai, Fast Retailing’s founder and Japan’s wealthiest man, hired Allied Works Architecture–the art-driven firm behind Wieden + Kennedy’s offices and the Clyfford Still Museum–to develop the design. “Not only was he questioning how they work as a company, he was really questioning Japanese corporate culture at the same time,” Allied Works principal Brad Cloepfil says. “That was the deep challenge: How much can you evolve Japanese work culture in one leap?”

When Allied Works embarked on the project, it didn’t want to simply drop a Silicon Valley office into the building. Rather, the architects zeroed in on what those offices supposedly provide employees: freedom. “We know from our experience with Western companies, people want to work outside the office, inside the office, at home, and in bars,” Cloepfil says. “In our culture today, the city is the work space.”

“It’s believing in human nature that when [the employees] are freed up and can meet in an incidental way, they can have space to think,” Cloepfil  says. “It cultivates ideas.”

In the old office, employees had to leave to buy food or beverages, but in the new one there are a few options: vending machines placed in the hallway (just like they are on Tokyo’s streets) for something quick and a more formal cafeteria setting. To get to the work spaces from the hallway, employees pass through doorways that mimic porches derived from Japanese houses.

There’s a gradation of activity from the busier hall to conference rooms, to work lounges with pin-up walls and long work tables, to individual desks, which helps reduce distractions for focused activities.

Because of the cultural differences and how different the new office is from the old one, Allied Works wondered if the experiment would work. Would employees use the spaces as the architects intended? Fast Retailing held a number of internal training sessions with managers to make sure they understood what the space was trying to accomplish and ensure that all employees knew they had the agency and permission to work where and how they wanted.

The new offices opened this year, and, sure enough, the employees used every space available to them, didn’t stay chained to their desks, and were excited about the design. Though they have flexibility, they still have to cope with the annoyances of an open office like noise and little visual privacy. Time will tell if satisfaction declines once the novelty wears off.

That same year, the brand poached Wieden + Kennedy’s creative director John Jay to lead its creative revolution. Since joining the brand, Jay has changed how the company thinks about design. It wasn’t just about bringing Uniqlo’s philosophy to the world; it was about bringing the world into Uniqlo and using that insight to develop better, more desirable products. For example, the company has research and design centers in cities around the world–Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai, and Tokyo–in which designers tap into the sensibilities inherent to those areas and feed it back into the overall collection.

Yanai has Silicon Valley-level growth ambitions, and now he has the office to match. Fast Retailing still has a long way to go. Yanai’s goal is to overtake Inditex, the parent company of Zara, which posted over $27 billion in sales in 2016, compared to Fast Retailing’s $17 billion. The company is still finding its footing in the United States, grappling with the ups and downs of Japan’s economy, and like many retailers is experimenting with new sales strategies in its physical locations and online. A slick new headquarters might not be enough to overcome these hurdles, but then again it could help Yanai and his team hatch their next great plan.