Sensuous wellness space

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has recently recommended the health-conscious management office. The WELL Certification from the US to evaluate buildings that consider the health of building users has also started to spread in Japan. There is an increasing need for space design to realize “offices for wellness” that consider the health and intellectual productivity of office workers in terms of ESG and SDGs.

People feel refreshed, relaxed, and comfortable in a nice outdoor climate. However, the actual outdoor is not always an appropriate work environment because many different conditions including insolation, wind, temperature, sound, and light tend to fluctuate a lot. “SOTOBEYA” is an indoor space that reproduces just the benefits of outdoors, without any large unwanted environmental changes. You can experience a nice break and feel refreshed in SOTOBEYA. In addition, relaxing meetings are likely to help you come up with abundant ideas.

Carpet, furniture, and plant shelves in SOTOBEYA are designed to call up images of soil, grass, and trees. As a result, this space creates a casual atmosphere rather than a formal impression of a general office and makes you feel close to outdoor nature. In addition, indirect lighting that simulates skylight named Sky Appear is installed in the ceiling. This lighting sheds deep light that appears to be skylight into the space. “Sound Conditioning” suppresses unpleasant elements and emphasizes comfortable elements in outdoor soundscape and bring them into indoors in real time to create a sense of togetherness with the comfortable outdoors and arouse a refreshing feeling along with a relaxing effect.

We verified in experiments with human subjects that SOTOBEYA creates a relaxing effect similar to the comfortable outdoors, that intellectual performance improves after taking a break in “SOTOBEYA”, and that those attendee come up with highly creative ideas in meetings held in SOTOBEYA