ModuleX® was selected for the factory building of Sailor Pen, which is a long-established stationery manufacturer famous for producing Japan's first fountain pens and inventing the brush pen.

The company built a new production factory for fountain pen points and inks in its birthplace of Kure in Hiroshima Prefecture. The building where a new chapter of the company is beginning features a pen point motif on the exterior.
Not only the building exterior but also the interior has a distinctive design featuring an open space, extending from the entrance up to the rooftop. We prepared a lighting plan by considering how beautifully we can express this building design, using natural light from the skylight and the lighting effects from artificial light.

Since the building gets abundant natural light during the daytime, we used our proprietary lighting design technology, Lighting Naturalization®, to carefully balance natural light, which causes differences in brightness between indoors and outdoors, and artificial light, which adjusts such differences. Our lighting environment control technology ModuleX® Controls was also used to optimally balance brightness and illumination during the daytime and nighttime.

Having almost no natural light, the entrance on the first floor focuses on the centrality of design by highlighting the spiral staircase, covered by a cylinder, with the Gradation Lighting to guide visitors upstairs.

The reception area on the second floor introduced our independently developed lighting design technique, Lighting Modulation in Viewing Angle Range®. This is because we thought that the contrast between light and dark created by the wooden floor pattern leading to the atrium, which resembles a pen nib, and the beautiful white plaster and glass windows used on the ceiling, significantly changes the impression of the space. After verifying where and how much lighting energy should be irradiated, we decided to adopt a method that makes the back space of the building look brighter during the daytime when natural light is available. Based on this approach, we developed a lighting plan to adjust the differences in brightness between indoors and outdoors by balancing illumination and brightness with a focus on the look of the building viewed from outside during the time between evening and night.

We also used glare-controlled downlights to ensure a clear night view from inside the building, as there is no reflection of the lighting fixtures in the window glasses.
Even when people look up at the building from outside, they will not notice the presence of lighting fixtures. The light reflected from the floor spreads gently inside the space, allowing people to watch the entire building in a brightness balance different from the daytime.