Project Name: 〇

Location: Tokyo, Japan

Design Team: IGArchitects

Total Floor Area: 132.50 m²

Completion: December 2025

Photography: Ooki Jingu

Feature: Tokyo-based practice IGArchitects, led by architect Masato Igarashi, has completed the renovation of a single floor office in Shibuya, creating a continuously adaptable workspace through the insertion of six circular elements that transcend conventional architectural hierarchies. This project, titled simply "〇" (circle), reimagines the traditional office environment as a fluid field where uses constantly shift and overlap rather than being fixed to predetermined zones, demonstrating how spatial margin itself can serve as a design strategy to create a framework capable of continuous renewal amid uncertain functional requirements.

The core challenge of this project lay in addressing unfixed office program requirements. The client sought not a space organized around specific functions, but a place capable of accommodating multiple unfixed modes of use including employee welfare and receptions. Through a series of discussions, the architect discovered that the client held an intuitive sense of spatial bias and imagined places of occupation within the single floor. Rather than codifying these ambiguous requirements into fixed functional zones, Masato Igarashi conceived the spatial margin itself as the primary architectural proposition.

The defining feature of this architecture is its innovative configuration of six scaleless ring elements. Rather than dividing the 132.5-square-meter space with conventional walls or rigid partitions, Masato Igarashi introduced ring elements that span from architectural components to furniture-like elements across scales. These rings are neither walls that divide space nor clearly defined rooms, but are positioned as devices that gently guide occupation, sightlines, and actions.

Each ring element embodies contradictory qualities, simultaneously possessing opposing properties of connecting and separating, enclosing and opening outward, generating forces of attraction and repulsion within the space and continuously renewing the relationship between people and space. When the stove burns, height differentials generate significant environmental variations. This strategic design creates layered spatial experiences, allowing the office space to organically emerge different relationships according to user actions and situations.

The single floor composed by these ring groups has neither a clear center nor periphery, becoming a field in which uses and modes of occupation constantly fluctuate. The space does not carry a fixed meaning, nor is it subsumed into a single function. Relationships emerge in response to actions and situations, and patterns of use shift, overlap, and are repeatedly renewed over time. This project demonstrates how to establish a spatial framework capable of withstanding change by responding directly to client requirements without defining them as singular uses.

In the contemporary context, a diversity of functions and behaviors that cannot be encompassed by the term "office" alone overlap and extend throughout the floor. By reinterpreting latent environmental differences and relationships within the floor, the design explores a configuration for coexistence that neither fragments the space nor relies on clear zoning, creating a workspace filled with vitality that coexists symbiotically with usage needs.

Design Team: IGArchitects stands as a pioneering force in contemporary Japanese architectural practice, founded in 2020 by Tokyo-born architect Masato Igarashi, having established a significant position in contemporary architectural design and spatial relationship innovation since its founding. This Tokyo-based practice redefines contemporary Japanese architects' role in design discourse through exploring how architectural elements can generate new relationships between inhabitants and their environments.

Masato Igarashi brings exceptional spatial composition design perspectives and deep understanding of structural expression to architectural practice. The practice has garnered recognition for its commitment to continuous investigation into structural forms as both load-bearing systems and spatial organizers. Masato Igarashi, born in Tokyo in 1983, graduated from Kogakuin University Graduate School of Architecture in 2008 and worked at Shimizu Corporation's design department, joined SUPPOSE DESIGN OFFICE in 2014, accumulating extensive practical experience before starting individual design activities in 2019 and establishing his independent practice in 2020. His teaching engagement encompasses adjunct lecturer positions at Tokyo University of Science, Tokyo Denki University, and Hosei University, and currently leads the firm alongside staff member Yuki Yazaki.

The firm's design philosophy emphasizes that architecture should move beyond conventional programmatic definitions, exploring how innovative configurations of structure and space can create new relationships of inhabitation. The practice believes that through meticulous observation of site-specific conditions and in-depth research on spatial organization, architecture can challenge static notions of inhabitation and spatial definition. Through experimental approaches to spatial composition and structural expression, working across diversified works from residential housing to office architecture and interior design.

The practice has achieved significant recognition within the architectural community, with Pyramid Hat receiving the 2026 Kentiku Kyushu Award JIA Special Prize and 2025 JCD Okinawa Spatial Design Award Grand Prize. The firm also received the 2025 ArchDaily Next Practices Awards and was selected among the 25 best architecture firms in Japan 2025 by archello. House of Framework received the 2025 JIA Kanto Koshinetsu Chapter Housing Award Murofushi Jiro Prize, House with One Leg was included in the 2025 Architectural Institute of Japan Selected Architectural Designs and received the 2025 Kentiku Kyushu Award Merit. House with Pillars received the 2024 Asia Architecture Design Award Residential Interior Design Grand Prize.

Beyond practice, through precise grasp of spatial scale, in-depth research on structural innovation, and continuous exploration of spatial relationships, IGArchitects has established itself as a significant contributor to contemporary Japanese architectural discourse, creating architectural works that are both experimental and maintain architectural excellence. Publications across Japan, Taiwan, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Australia, and Korea have featured their projects, recognizing their contribution to advancing architectural discourse. Under the continued leadership of Masato Igarashi, the firm currently occupies a unique position within Japan's architectural landscape, focusing on creating architectural spaces filled with vitality that challenge static notions of inhabitation.