a+u December 2024: Nikken Sekkei 2000–2024 dedicates 600 pages to the organisational design practice founded 125 years ago, tracing how floor plans and layout plans function as the connective tissue between generations of designers and the evolving demands of Japanese cities.
About This Book
This special issue of a+u turns its attention to Nikken Sekkei, one of Japan's most significant organisational design firms, examining projects completed between 2000 and 2024 through the lens of what is passed down and what is reinvented. The editorial focus on floor plans and layout plans — each reproduced at 1/750 scale — is a deliberate methodological choice: these drawings are treated not as technical documents but as instruments for reading how designers interpret social and client needs. Interview-based project texts give voice to the thinking behind the built work, making this issue as much about design culture and institutional memory as it is about individual buildings and urban design outcomes.
Key Features
- 600 pages of project profiles, 1/750 scale floor and layout plans, and interview-based texts across work completed 2000–2024
- Published by Shinkenchiku-sha, 2024
What You'll Discover
- How Nikken Sekkei uses floor plans and layout plans as a shared design tool across a practice of approximately 3,000 employees
- The role of intergenerational knowledge transfer within a large organisational firm, and how design attitudes are inherited and evolved
- The range of building and urban design projects undertaken in Japan over a quarter-century, examined as a body of work rather than isolated commissions
- Interview-led insights into the thinking of individual designers within a collective practice structure, situating each project within broader architectural and urban challenges
About the Author
[Details available upon request]
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 600
- Dimensions: 290 x 220 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 4910019731245
- Publisher: Shinkenchiku-sha
- Publication Date: 2024
Perfect For: Architects and urban designers with an interest in large-scale practice models, Japanese architecture, and the role of drawing conventions in shaping design culture across institutions.