The headquarters of Kobayashi Denko, a wholesaler of electrical equipment and materials, stands along a major arterial road that runs east–west through Himeji City. This new office building was planned on a street set slightly back from that arterial road. The program places a materials warehouse on the first and second floors, while the third floor accommodates the functions of a “second headquarters” responsible for managing new business operations.
For the warehouse occupying the lower two floors, the circulation was designed so that trucks enter directly from the front road, unload inside the warehouse, and then continue through to the parking area beyond. At the center of the warehouse, a skylight was introduced to bring natural light into the interior. As this skylight penetrates vertically through the third-floor office also, it simultaneously functions as a light court for the office level above.
Seen from the façade, the third-floor office appears as a glass box floating in the air, suggesting an open office space exposed to the outside. In reality, however, the western side—overlooked by an apartment building behind the site—is deliberately closed to the exterior. Instead, the light court that extends downward to the warehouse floors becomes the principal means of securing daylight for the office.
The façade composition is classical in character. The lower floors form a ground level without openings, resembling the piano terra, while the third floor containing the offices is treated as the principal floor, the piano nobile, in a Renaissance-like arrangement. Around the third-floor office, terraces and plants are introduced so that this level becomes, conceptually, the “ground surface” for the people working there.
Into this seemingly straightforward composition, an element of disturbance —almost a form of spatial noise — was introduced in the form of a vertical void: the skylight that connects the office level with the warehouse below. Yet defining the spatial character of this void proved complex. For the lowest level, the requirement is light entering vertically from above. For the upper principal floor, however, light that diffuses horizontally is more desirable. Accordingly, on the third-floor office level, the west side of the void — the light court — was treated as a white wall to act as a reflective surface for diffused light, while the remaining three sides were opened with glasses. This configuration ensures the diffuse daylight required in the office. The intention was that the same natural light entering through the same vertical void would be experienced differently on each floor.
