Tokyo Design Week brings together international and local designers, manufacturers, retailers and entrepreneurs for a raft of exhibitions, gatherings and design-related events, and, of course, parties -- wherever designers get together, a party is not too far away. But apart from the civilized pleasure of tripping from opening to opening in the backstreets of Aoyama on a hazy cushion of bubbly, what is TDW all about? The Japan Times ran the champagne gauntlet, slipped behind the designer shades, and tried to find out what's on the minds of some of the influential denizens of this well-dressed demimonde.
Where does TDW sit in the international circuit of design events? Justin McGuirk, an editor at London-based architecture and design magazine Icon, is one of those visitors who has flown in to see what's happening. We caught up with him at the opening of the exhibition of "Love & Money: UK Design Now" at the Ozone Living Design Centre in West Shinjuku. He'd just stepped off the plane when we asked him what he thought design in Tokyo had to offer the world.
"At Icon we regard what's going on in Tokyo as one of the key cultural reference points for the world of contemporary design, along with Milan and London (home-base plug!). While it's not really a place where international designers come to launch things, it is certainly a place that designers love to be."