DA Osaka Branch Tokyo by RID
DA-OSAKA has established its Tokyo branch office in Jinbōchō, Chiyoda, working with RID to shape a workplace set within one of the city’s most storied publishing districts.
Headquartered in Osaka, the company specialises in interior construction for commercial premises, and the Tokyo outpost occupies a building once known locally as the Shinbun-no-Shinbun Building, a former newspaper printing site along the Nihonbashi River.
Completed with a façade clad in clove-dyed brown tiles, the building has remained largely unchanged over time, its muted exterior blending quietly into the historic streetscape. One of its defining characteristics is an external staircase that leads directly to the second floor, operating alongside a conventional elevator. Rather than treating this as a secondary access point, the project reconsiders circulation entirely, positioning human movement as the organising principle of the workplace.
The intervention shifts the primary entrance from the second floor to the ground level, drawing the previously external stair into the interior sequence and extending the approach inward. This move establishes the stair as a central element and conceptual anchor, reinforcing the first floor as the starting point of daily activity. A semicircular wall profile wraps the staircase, softening the transition between levels and guiding movement upward with a continuous gesture.
Material continuity plays a key role throughout. The clove-dyed tiles of the façade are carried inside to the second floor, blurring boundaries between exterior and interior. A small rectangular opening retained within the stair enclosure hints at the building’s former life, believed to have functioned as a mail slot, and now preserved as a quiet architectural trace.
Tiles reappear across columns within the work area and are integrated into selected pieces of furniture, creating a cohesive environment where architectural elements and fittings speak the same language. Custom lighting further reinforces this approach. Bracket lights and stainless-steel pendants incorporate arc-shaped details inspired by the motion of turning pages in old books, a subtle reference to the neighbourhood’s literary heritage.
Together, these elements form a workplace rooted in its surroundings and history, while supporting contemporary patterns of use. The Tokyo branch office is conceived as a place where people, time and accumulated energy intersect, allowing a new chapter to take shape within an enduring urban context.
