Roju Minami Aoyama

Good Office, Good Life

I helped with the branding and website for Roju, an office building in Minami Aoyama, Tokyo. Under the slogan "Good Office, Good Life," Roju is an office building brand that contributes to people's rich work and life by providing creative office spaces. The interior design was handled by HOUSETRAD, the spatial design company known for Pacific Furniture Service, and I joined the launch of the brand to handle branding and promotion.

A workspace with a steel staircase and wooden desks — Work Space (Model Room)

A wooden-deck terrace with benches and stump stools — Terrace

A kitchen counter and a navy restroom door with a porthole window — Kitchen / Restroom

The project began with the owner's wish to renovate an entire underused building in Minami Aoyama and create an office building brand aimed at forward-thinking creative companies. In building the brand, I focused on raising the productivity of the input and output at the root of creative work, enriching both the workspaces (output) and the common spaces (input) to build a narrative of "Good Office" > "Good Innovation" > "Good Life."

A common space with a sofa, a rug, and a counter — Common Space

A conference room with white tiled walls and a large window — Conference Room

A library space with shelves of magazines and books and a bench — Library Space

The name "Roju" comes from 路樹 (roju), a Japanese word for roadside trees. When thinking about what an office building should be, I felt the ideal was for it to blend comfortably into the minds of everyone who passes by, not just the tenants, both as a place to work and as part of the streetscape. So I likened it to roadside trees, which stand with a quiet presence even if you don't usually give them a thought.

Roju Brand site

Detailed specifications for the building and each space were already published as property listings on the website of the management company, Green Seed, so I designed the brand site around the theme of "scroll from top to bottom and you'll get the gist of Roju." It supports both Japanese and English to appeal to international companies as well. Alongside the brand site, we distributed leaflets and held a flea market with female influencers in the model room. Within six months of opening, every unit was filled, all by creative companies, including foreign ones.

Client: YSG Holdings
Agency: Mode International
Interior Design: HOUSETRAD
Communication Planning: Hiroyuki Karikomi
Naming / Concept: Kazunori Miura
Logo Design: Hiroyuki Karikomi
Scriptwriting: Kazunori Miura
Copywriting: Kazunori Miura
Website Design: Kazunori Miura
Website Development: Kazunori Miura
Photography: Akito Mori, YSG Holdings
Launch: 2016
Website: http://minamiaoyama.roju.jp/en/