The office as a stage: NII presents its vision for the future of work at Salone del Mobile

The name itself is a statement of intent: “NII comes from the word ‘ingenious’. We combined the ‘I’ from ITOKI to create the name ‘NII’. It reflects our intention to bring a unique perspective and creative thinking, and to go beyond conventional ideas of the workplace. We see NII as a brand that explores new possibilities in how people work and interact.” Formerly Creative Director of Sony’s Design Center Europe in London, Tako has led NII since its inception in 2025. His approach fuses object and experience, physical and digital, product and space – a sensibility shaped by years of work across design, branding, and spatial direction on the global stage. Within ITOKI’s complex ecosystem of solutions, NII carves out a precise role under his guidance: “the most active and vibrant part,” Tako says, “the one that encourages people to come back to the office, to spark conversation and creativity.” 

NII presents seven collections at the fair. Three of them are world premieres. HAKUSAN, created by the celebrated London studio Industrial Facility, founded by Sam Hecht and Kim Colin, is a stacking chair that aspires to define a new archetype: a steel frame, die-cast aluminium armrests, and a press-moulded plywood shell. BIWA, by in-house designer Kohei Wada, is a task chair with a soft silhouette inspired by the traditional Japanese musical instrument from which it takes its name. ALLROUND, designed by Tako himself, is a metal stool with casters hidden in its base, engineered to glide with the fluidity of a hockey puck between people in a workshop. The four collections already launched in Japan complete the presentation. PIGNA, by AMDL CIRCLE studio led by Michele De Lucchi, is a modular system of dividers and seating that reinterprets the wooden shingle: panels filter light and air, creating welcoming micro-architectures that shelter without isolating. BITMAP, designed by Todd Bracher, is perhaps the most emblematic piece of Ingenious Design: a single module composed of two rectangular volumes fused along one edge, where the smaller block appears almost suspended. A single element can generate hundreds of different configurations – letters, islands, landscapes – because every surface can become a seat, a table, a backrest, or an armrest. Completing the lineup are CONNEXA by Rodolfo Agrella, with its organic steel structure supporting infinitely expandable glass tops, and the seating system PARLAMENTO by Jun Aizaki / CRÈME, inspired by the sculptural forms of 1970s lounges. 

The installation at the fair translates this philosophy into spatial experience. Two islands arranged like a landscape display the products on elevated levels. Ten venetian blind walls, five meters high, each driven by a mechanism that controls their movement, articulate the space through a choreography programmed in coordination with the lighting. On the walls, light sources recreate sunlight filtering through a window. “Even though it’s a trade fair booth, we want to offer an environmental experience,” Tako explains. And that experience comes through a precise choice: no spectacular set design, but the most anonymous and universal objects of the work environment. “We chose familiar and recognizable pieces as elements of space design,” the creative director says: the raised access floor with its grid pattern, the metal blinds –  the very same materials that anyone who has ever worked in an office knows intimately, and that through light and movement evoke those moments of happy ordinariness at work: the sun moving through the shutters, that brief distraction at the desk that brings us back to the human dimension of things. Great simplicity, yet charged with meaning. 

NII is built on the foundations of ITOKI Corporation, founded in Japan in 1890. But ITOKI is not simply a furniture company: with more than 180 in-house designers, it offers spatial design services, work-style consulting, and digital solutions based on data analysis. “We can’t decide where and how you should work,” Tako explains. “It’s about culture – about how we reflect the culture of the brand or company we support.” This comprehensive vision of the work environment – one that encompasses space, technology, and human behaviour – is what makes NII possible, and what gives its design language a depth that extends far beyond the object. 

NII’s appearance at the Salone is not merely the international presentation of a brand, but the arrival on the global design stage of a Japanese design culture that carries with it over a century of observation on how people work, relate, and inhabit space.