Embraced in Recycled Steel Office by Nobuaki Miyashita is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2025 Silver A' Design Award in Interior Space and Exhibition Design Competition Category.
SilverInterior· 2025
Embraced in Recycled Steel Office
Client: Kyoei Steel Ltd.
Silver A' Design Award Winner in Interior Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #171450The Design
About Embraced in Recycled Steel Office
Embraced in Recycled Steel is an office interior built with recycled steel supplied by Kyoei Steel. Angle steel, rebars, and flat bars are left exposed to emphasize material strength and texture. Structural elements that are usually concealed become aesthetic focal points. Barcode and QR code motifs extend across wall finishes and stair railings, linking the space to the company identity. Steel ceiling louvers hold seamless linear LED lighting that highlights the motifs. The interior shows the potential of repurposed materials in a contemporary workplace.
The Recognition
About the Silver A' Design Award
Embraced in Recycled Steel Office is a Silver A' Design Award winner, an extraordinarily prestigious recognition granted to top-of-the-line, gorgeous, and impressive designs. Silver winners are tremendously brilliant and exceedingly creative works that illustrate the outstanding expertise, talent, and acuity of their designers. Embraced in Recycled Steel Office is expected to be a wonderful, showpiece work that is remarkably professional and profoundly innovative. This Silver A' Design Award-winning design is a highly notable, admired invention that benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Embraced in Recycled Steel Office is a vastly envied creation that evokes desires, introduces positive feelings, and sparks amazement and wonderment.
Where to Get It
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Grand Interview
Your innovative integration of barcode and QR code motifs throughout the Embraced in Recycled Steel Office creates a unique visual language - could you elaborate on how this digital-industrial fusion reflects Kyoei Steel's identity and mission?
The barcode and QR code motifs symbolize Kyoei Steel’s evolution from traditional manufacturing to a digitally integrated enterprise. By translating industrial identity into a visual system, we expressed the company’s philosophy of “recycling with intelligence.” The black-and-white stripes are not decorative—they represent material data, process rhythm, and the circulation of resources, forming a new architectural language of industrial transparency.
The transformation of typically concealed structural elements into aesthetic focal points in the Embraced in Recycled Steel Office challenges conventional office design - what inspired your decision to celebrate these industrial materials so prominently?
The decision to expose rebar, steel plates, and structural components arose from a desire to reveal the beauty of manufacturing itself. Rather than concealing the structure, we transformed it into a spatial narrative about the cycle of creation. Each element retains its raw industrial character, yet collectively they create an atmosphere of precision and dignity—embodying the poetry of steel.
How did your research into material experimentation and lighting analysis influence the final execution of the Embraced in Recycled Steel Office, particularly in terms of creating dynamic interplay between recycled steel and illumination?
We conducted extensive experiments on how light interacts with recycled steel surfaces—testing gloss levels, oxide layers, and reflection angles. The interplay between matte and mirror finishes generated a dynamic rhythm under linear LED illumination. The final lighting composition allows steel to appear alternately solid and fluid, evoking both material strength and atmospheric delicacy.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- This office interior transforms Kyoei Steel’s recycled steel—angle steel, rebars, and flat bars—into a refined architectural expression. Typically hidden elements become aesthetic highlights, emphasizing material strength and texture. Barcode and QR code motifs extend across the space, visually linking to Kyoei Steel’s corporate identity. Lighting enhances these patterns, creating a dynamic interplay between recycled steel, technology, and light.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Site Area: 108,045.44 Square meters
Building Area: 1,091.12 Square meters
Total Floor Area: 3,931.89 Square meters
Structure: RC
Number of Floors: 4 above ground
Maximum Height: 19.9 m
Eaves Height: 16.5 m
Floor Height: 3.9 m
Ceiling Height: 2.9 m - Tags
- architecture, office, lighting design, recycled steel, sustainable design
- Production Technology
- The office interior features angle steel, rebars, and flat bars as exposed materials, emphasizing their structural and aesthetic qualities. Barcode motifs, derived from Kyoei Steel’s website, are embedded in wall finishes and stair railings, linking physical space to digital branding. The ceiling’s steel louvers incorporate billet-shaped seamless LED lighting, reinforcing a cohesive design language that blends recycled materials with innovative illumination.
- Design Challenge
- The primary challenge was redefining recycled steel’s role in architecture beyond its conventional industrial use. Integrating angle steel, rebars, and flat bars as visible elements required precise detailing and innovative finishing techniques. Additionally, balancing material authenticity with a refined aesthetic posed a design challenge. Regulatory constraints, production limitations, and ensuring harmony between raw steel textures and digital motifs, such as barcode patterns, demanded extensive prototyping and iterative design development.
- Research
- Type of Research: Applied Design Research
Objective: To explore the aesthetic and functional integration of recycled steel in office interiors.
Methodology: Material experimentation, spatial simulations, and lighting analysis.
Data Collection: Prototype testing and digital modeling.
Participants: Architects, engineers, and Kyoei Steel stakeholders.
Results & Insights: The research highlighted the potential of exposed steel as a design element, demonstrating its structural beauty and reinforcing corporate identity. The study advanced sustainable interior design, influencing material reuse practices in industrial architecture. - Inspiration
- The design embodies the lifecycle of steel recycling while visually integrating Kyoei Steel’s digital identity. Barcode and QR code patterns, inspired by the company’s website, appear throughout the space, symbolizing the transformation of raw materials into structured design. By exposing and celebrating recycled steel, the project creates a unique spatial narrative, merging industrial heritage with a contemporary digital aesthetic.
- Project Duration
- The project commenced in early 2022 in Yamaguchi, Japan, with design and planning phases focused on integrating Kyoei Steel’s identity into the architecture. Construction began in mid-2023, aiming to unify office functions while enhancing operational efficiency and employee engagement. The office was completed in early 2024, creating a sustainable workspace that embodies the company’s commitment to steel recycling and innovation.
- Operation Flow
- The office interior integrates barcode and QR code motifs, linking the space to Kyoei Steel’s corporate identity. These patterns, expressed in wall treatments and stairwell designs, create an interactive experience, guiding movement through the space. The ceiling’s steel louvers diffuse light while reinforcing the visual continuity of barcode-inspired elements. This design transforms an industrial material narrative into a contemporary, high-tech environment.
- Patents
- N/A
- Team Members
- N/A
- Image Credits
- Image #1,#2 : Photographer Nobuaki Miyashita Variations, 2024
Image #3,#4,#5 : Photographer Sato Kenta, Variations, 2024.
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