Sobokuya attended the JAPAN ReWOOD 2023 event held in Tokyo this weekend. We exhibited a remote working booth, a compact working space ideal for focused work, which saw interest from many visitors throughout the event.

JAPAN ReWOOD is a smaller sub-event that is part of the Wood Collection 2023 event, which was held in the Winter of this year which Sobokuya also attended. The ReWOOD event was about 1/4th size of the Wood Collection event held earlier this year, allowing for more time to meet with other exhibitors during the event. While the main Wood Collection event is primarily focused on BtoB, ReWOOD places a heavier focus on BtoC. Due to this, we had more general visitors this time around, and it was a delight to see the general public’s interest and curiosity in our exhibition.

For our exhibition this time around we decided to exhibit our remote-working booth. This remote working space started off with a more straightforward design that we made for the 8MATO resort, initially designed to be functional outdoors; we decided to craft a new design for the exhibition, focused on indoor usage with a more traditional Japanese design inspired by the Sobokuya Tea House.

Creating the Remote-Working Booth

The concept behind the booth is simple: create a compact office space that can fit into a normal room, allowing one to separate work from everyday life. In recent years remote work has become ever more common in Japan, and more positions are now offered remotely than ever before. But, Japanese homes are rarely large enough to dedicate a whole room to an office space. Having a small room-within-a-room as this booth allows alleviating the issue of not being able to dedicate a whole room to be an office space. The remote working booth’s default design is compact, just about 1.5m in width. The booth is made-to-order and can be customised to suit the needs of the customer, sizing can be adjusted just as well as the design and wood used for the booth can be altered upon request.

The booth’s design can be altered depending on the client’s needs. For the exhibition, we added a sugi bark roofing to the remote-working booth, this type of roofing would not be necessary for indoor usage and the booth can be had without any form of roofing or with a more spartan roofing to fully enclose the space.

Whether this booth could be fitted to work in a garden was a common inquiry during the event, and of course we can alter the design to make it suitable for outdoor usage. For outdoor usage, we will design more resilient roofing and change out materials not suited for outdoor usage – such as the washi paper walls and shoji door. Washi is a type of paper making it unsuitable for outdoor usage, an outdoor design would incorporate more wood for the shoji and external walls. The booth design can also be altered to be suitable for other usages, a reading space, a compact workshop, or a relaxation booth.

The JAPAN ReWOOD Exhibition

The exhibition was held at Tokyo Big Sight, just as Wood Collection 2023 earlier in the year. The exhibition halls opened to businesses on the 18th and to the general public from the 19th to the 20th. Booth preparations began on the 17th and the exhibition wrapped up on the evening of the 20th.

As ReWOOD is about a quarter the size of the Wood Collection exhibition there were ample opportunities to meet with different exhibitioners and see their booths throughout the event. We also had a great number of exhibitioners come to visit our booth and express their interest in our design, the first two days of the exhibition were by far and large the busiest. Sunday also saw plenty of visitors, but it was a calmer and less active exhibition day.

For the event, Sobokuya had four staff present throughout the weekend: our representative director and three staff members. We finished up our final exhibition preparations on the 16th and departed to the event location from Yatsugatake on the morning of the 17th. Booth construction was finalized around 18:00 on the same day, and the exhibition began at 10:00 on the 18th and ran until 16:00 on the 20th.

Throughout the days of the event, we had plenty of opportunities to discuss ideas with other exhibitors and see what brilliant items they brought to exhibit. There was plenty of exquisite craftsmanship on display. We also had the honour to meet and talk with several designers at the event.

We are grateful to everyone that came to visit our booth during the event and for all your insightful comments and feedback. We are looking forward to joining further events and are currently looking at the possibility of attending the Tokyo Wood Collection 2024 this coming winter.

Sobokuya’s Remote-Working Booth

Sobokuya’s booth featured our newly designed remote-working booth. A space for focused work where one can be engulfed by the soothing scent of wood. Uniquely for the event, we added a simple roofing to the booth made out of sugi bark. The concept behind the remote-working booth is that with the increase of remote work, many lack a dedicated space to focus on their work, a space that lets one separate work life and personal life. By utilizing a compact workspace booth we can create an office space where one can focus on work, studies, or other activities in private.

The booth is made to order and can be customized depending on individual requirements and tastes. The baseline price for the booth exhibited is 880,000 yen, the cost of an order-made booth will vary depending on what design and material alterations are made. A simpler booth will be cheaper than the baseline price, and a more complex or larger booth will increase the final price. Get in touch through our contact form or through our newly launched online shop site if you are interested in a booth of your very own.

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