Here's another project by Japanese designers Nendo. This time an office space near the Meguro river in Tokyo, which they divided by creating walls with cut-outs that almost reach the floor.

The walls are meant to evoke waves or cloth sagging to the ground.

Employees move between various working areas by stepping over the lowest points of the partitions.

The following text is from Nendo:

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The office is located near the Meguro river in Tokyo, on the fifth floor of an old office building. We wanted the usual spaces and functions – meeting space, management, workspace and storage – to be separate but also to maintain a sense of connection between them.

To achieve this effect we divided the space with walls that seem to sag and flop like a piece of cloth held up between two hands, enclosing the various spaces more than the usual office dividers but less than actual walls.

Employees can move between spaces by walking over the parts of the walls that ‘sag’ the most, thus emphasising the contrast between the uses of the different spaces.

Spaces that need more sound-proofing are enclosed with the kind of plastic curtains you might find at a small factory, so that people can work without worrying about noise but not feel isolated.

When you stand up and look through the whole space people, shelves and plants seem to appear and disappear as though floating between the waves.