DESIGNART Tokyo in Review

2022.12.21

This October, DESIGNART Tokyo celebrated its sixth edition, bringing together nearly 100 exhibitions under the theme Together. Here we round up some of the highlights from the city-wide event.
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The 2022 edition of DESIGNART Tokyo was perfectly timed, as Japan opened its borders to foreign visitors after being closed due to pandemic-related restrictions for almost three years. Our editor-in-chief spent the week wandering around central Tokyo to find new and emerging talent in everyone’s favourite design destination. Here are some of her favourite discoveries this year.

[all day place x A Green]
Directed by A Green’s founder and scent designer Megumi Fukatsu, FEEL HOTEL TOGETHER was an installation at the newly opened all day place hotel in Shibuya that combined all five senses in an interactive installation that married art and fragrance. A diverse group of next-generation designers and artists created site specific artworks that were displayed throughout the hotel for the duration of DESIGNART. Besides exhibits at the reception, there were specially staged rooms where lucky visitors could stay overnight.

[ambi & Studio Relight]
In collaboration with Sawaya Co., these two creative studios produced a collection of work made from recycled glass from discarded fluorescent light bulbs. A series of vases, trays and objects were designed and produced using a sand-casting technique that highlights the unique colour and texture of the recycled glass.

[Ao.]
Ao. (meaning ‘blue’ in Japanese) is a Tokyo-based furniture brand specialising in solid wood furniture dyed with natural indigo. Every piece is carefully processed by hand by one of Ao.’s craftsmen, making the most of locally sourced high-quality wood. For DESIGNART, the company presented Ao.Re:, a collection of pieces made from discarded wooden furniture and solid wood felled or sawed in Tokyo, creating a hybrid of old and new, made in collaboration with anova design and furniture design studio KOKKOK.

[Ariake x Neri&Hu Design and Research Office]
Japanese furniture brand Ariake, led by creative director Gabriel Tan, has launched a new collection in collaboration with Shanghai-based duo neri&hu. Named Umu, the bedroom collection is partly inspired by a Chinese aesthetic philosophy of opposition and interdependence, the dichotomy of solid and void. The architects sought to bring together multiple functions into each piece, with various configurations to suit different spaces.

[Atsushi Shindo]
A collaboration between Tokyo-based designer Atsushi Shindo and tile manufacturer CERAMIC OLIVE Inc., DIG-DUG is a series of textural decorative lights inspired by the age-old building material brick and the free-spirited rawness of the Japanese Mono-ha art movement. As Shindo explained, ‘I wanted the design to be as simple as possible because I wanted to focus on the soil itself; the core material of clay bricks. I wanted to retain a form I could touch and feel the dense, moist coldness but also warmth as well.’

[Daisuke Yamamoto / DE:SIGN]
A trained interior designer, Daisuke Yamamoto worked for the internationally renowned Masamichi Katayama at Wonderwall before founding his own practice, where his work is already garnering international recognition and awards. For DESIGNART, Yamamoto produced a series of chairs made from recycled construction material. The series, titled Flow, comprises 8 unique, and surprisingly comfortable, chairs.

[Junichi Ishigaki Design]
After studying mechanical engineering and industrial design, Junichi Ishigaki founded his namesake studio. At DESIGNART and in Milan this year, Ishigaki exhibited a collection of portable modular furniture called Array Polar. A table, storage unit and stool in one, Array Polar is made from a hardened felt made from recycled fibres. Given its size and versatility, it’s the kind of product that is ideal for apartment living.

[Junichiro Yokota Studio]
In collaboration with Mitsui Chemicals, Junichiro Yokota exhibited a range of outdoor benches made from TAFNEX™, a new material made from carbon fibre offcuts. The Layer bench is composed of two overlapping upper and lower sections, and each individual part has a shape that cannot stand on its own — only once combined do the two imperfect parts form a complete product.

[Sohma Furutate Design]
Tokyo-based Sohma Furutate showed his work as part of the UNDER30 showcase. MASS is a collection of sculptural furniture that exemplifies his approach and his respect for the innate qualities of the materials he chooses to work with. MASS, produced from thin sheets of metal that are sensual and appear ephemeral, encourage the viewer to see things differently.

[Studio POETIC CURIOSITY]
Studio POETIC CURIOSITY was founded in 2020 by Yusuke Aonuma and Kensho Miyoshi, who met in Milan in 2015. The duo exhibited two concepts during DESIGNART this year, one of which was the interactive Wind Whisperer installation. The Wind Whisperer is a 3D-printed object reminiscent of an antique gramophone, with a mouthpiece included. The device senses your presence via light and motion sensors, and when you speak into the device, it ‘captures’ your thoughts and sends them off in a physical thought bubble to float away in the wind. Inspired by the anxiety and loneliness induced by the pandemic, the Wind Whisperer is both poetic and disarming.

[STUDIO YUMAKANO]
We first met Japanese designer Yuma Kano in Milan in 2019, when he showed his Rust Harvest series. This year at DESIGNART, Kano exhibited a chair and a table that show his experimentation with ForestBank™️, a material made from small trees, foliage, bark, seeds, soil and other organic matter otherwise considered worthless for construction or furniture making, mixed together with a water-based acrylic resin. The colouring and texture of the offcuts creates a unique pattern that works with the soft timber grain Kano selected, making for two noteworthy pieces.

[UO]
Hamamatsu-based UO, founded by Yu Matsuda and Yuichiro Tani, presented the Omotesando Replica Project at Omotesando Hills. The designers took a single twig from one of the zelkova trees that line Tokyo’s famous Omotesando boulevard, just 60 metres from the exhibition site, and made 2,000 copies of it using 3D-printing technology. The installation is made entirely of that single twig shape, twisted and turned to create a geometric composition.

Of the concept behind the installation, the designers explained that ‘No other form of the same twig exists, and if someone had stepped on it before or after the timing of its discovery, it might have changed to a different form. In a sense, this branch is the product of chance, formed from the only intersection of infinite space and time. By duplicating it 2,000 times, arranging it and creating a large sculpture, we wondered if we could create an effect like a magnifying glass that would clarify the uniqueness of its existence.’

[Yuji Okitsu]
Tokyo-based designer Yuji Okitsu first showed his FOCUS light in Milan in 2018, and since then the pendant has been refined and commercialised by the French lighting brand DCWéditions. The mobile-style structure consists of a series of thin, round lenses and a rim of LED lights set in a minimal frame. This clever design means the lenses are continually creating new views and reframing the surrounding scenery and responding to subtle ambient changes in the space, making the pendant not just a light, but also an interesting interior object.

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▪ Source: Wallpaper*｜https://design-anthology.com/story/designart-tokyo-in-review

▪ Words: Suzy Annetta

▪ Photography Credit: ©all day place, ©Nacasa & Partners, ©Tomohiro Mazawa, ©Ryohei Maehara, ©Sota Kumagai, ©Mina Asaba, ©STUDIO YUMAKANO, ©Yu Matsuda, ©Yuji Okitsu