TORAFU ARCHITECTS

We worked on the interior and exterior planning of the Tokyo Creation Center, the first new creation center outside of North America for Arc'teryx, a Canadian outdoor brand headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, at the base of the Coast Mountain range. We renovated a reinforced concrete building with one basement and two aboveground floors on a hill in Meguro Aobadai. The idea was to create a local facility for designers from Japan, the headquarters, and worldwide to meet and design, develop, and prototype products in partnership with the athletes who utilize the products. The facility was therefore required to incorporate local characteristics and to create a space where people could inspire each other.

So we set its design concept as “OUTSIDE IN” to promote the connection between inside and outside in different dimensions. The first floor is a sewing area and work area for prototype creation, the second floor is an office for designers, the basement is a multi-purpose community space, a fabric cutting workshop and warehouse, and the rooftop, which has a great view, is a space where athletes and guests can gather.
Entering through the automatic door laid with slanted and indigo-dyed boards which close to form the brand's initial "A", customers are welcomed by cypress display shelves covering the entire wall facing the atrium. The shelves symbolize the facility, displaying the brand's archives as items that convey the culture of Japan and Tokyo, its outstanding skills, crafts, innovation, and aesthetic. The production area, whose center has many sewing machines, has a significant centripetal impression with the circular layout of fan-shaped cutting tables and the ceiling with cypress louvers absorbing sound. The office area, at the back of this level, is where workers overlook a courtyard resembling a slice of Japanese mountain scenery.
The second-floor office space, where designers from around the world gather, has large cutting tables arranged by desks, allowing for seamless switching between individual work and teamwork. The wall of display shelves continuing from the first floor, and the common louvered ceiling, emphasize the solidarity between the upper and lower floors.
The event space on the basement level can be fully opened via three sliding doors, to accommodate both indoor and outdoor events. The workshop space, partitioned off with glass walls, has a backdrop of neatly arranged materials and tools. The light curtain ceiling, which takes work efficiency into consideration, creates a gallery-like effect. The light curtain ceiling of the stairwell, which connects the basement to the first floor, was consciously planned to connect both floors seamlessly.
The rooftop, accessed by the exterior staircase, has two levels of relaxing terraces. We created the bench with 12 cut stumps of Yanasesugi trees preserved in Umaji Village, Kochi Prefecture for many years. It is illuminated in the evenings with indirect lighting and appears in a ring shape, creating a special spot from which to enjoy a beautiful view.

Connecting directly with the outside to bring everything in, Arc'teryx puts importance on communication with nature and designers for product development. We aimed to create an open and connective space for Arc'teryx.

※ About artworks
For this project, we placed artworks on the theme of “mountain” to evoke the brand's origins.
Basement floor, Conference room / Hatano Wataru; Calligraphy of kanji “Mountain” written with soil and ink on Washi resembling a mountain range.
First floor, Next to the office / BUAISOU: Indigo-dyed work expresses the various knots like a climbing rope. The rope's undulations resemble mountains, while concealing the shape of the Archaeopteryx, the origin of the Arc'teryx logo.
First floor, Courtyard / TSUBAKI: The artwork that pays homage to the small natural activities of Japan's mountains, with native Japanese plants planted on rocks.
Second floor, Lounge space/Ishiyama Kazuhiro: A two-dimensional work featuring a mountain in the Himalayas, expressing the time of day and night on a single sheet composed of a vast number of photographs.
Second floor, Conference room / Yuichi Yokoyama: A wall of artwork with the motif from a poem about Mt. Fuji from his book “NEO MANYO”.