Now that the flurry of activity that surrounds the annual Salone del Mobile has died down, this month's On: Design takes a look at a few of the interiors fair's Japanese prizewinning ideas and new product debuts.
Plastic fantastic: Examining the obsession over Japan's soft vinyl toys
It's a cold afternoon in mid-January and, inside a factory operated by Maruyama Toys in a quiet residential area in Tokyo's Katsushika Ward, Cory Privitera is making sofubi (soft vinyl toys). In a cramped workspace surrounded by machinery and long sinks, the 33-year-old begins by ...
In 2018, art came via many anniversaries in Japan
This year saw a lot of anniversaries in Japan. It was 1868 when Crown Prince Mutsuhito became the Emperor Meiji, the official policy of national isolation ended and the country was set on a course to become a modern industrialized nation-state. This birthday seems ...
Shared spaces, locally produced goods and everyday objects
Making physical connections with people, whether via large-scale events and spaces or design concepts, and a continued celebration of traditional crafts, appeared to be a key direction for design in Japan this year. "2018 was the year Japan embraced the idea of 'shared space' — ...
Designer Linda Polgar gives vintage textiles a new lease of life
Longtime Tokyo resident on choosing fabric, fashion designers and surviving Japanese summer.
Takaoka crafts a new tourism industry
In the entrance of Nousaku in Takaoka, Toyama Prefecture, a group of schoolchildren skip by and point excitedly at an eclectic display of hundreds of brightly colored objects. Other visitors, meanwhile, look down in wonder toward the concrete floor, where a huge golden silhouette ...
Issey Miyake finds its Kyoto home
With its tiered roof, latticed exterior and exposed beams, the new Issey Miyake Kyoto flagship is more than just a store; it's a celebration of one of Kyoto's best-known traditional structures — the machiya.
It's time to stop blocking color
Minimalist interiors have been a growing trend for many years now, primarily dominated by a monochromatic palette of white. But who says we need to abandon color to live a de-cluttered life?
Light designer creates European ambience
From a young age, Stuttgart-born Megumi Ito always felt "a bit different" from people in her seaside home of Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture. ...
Reconstructing the Japanese house
After very successful runs in Rome and London, "The Japanese House: Architecture and Life after 1945," an exhibition of maquettes, photographs, plans and drawings, is now in the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. For providing an extensive look at varied and eclectic forms that ...
Designer Yosuke Ushigome finds solutions to culture shock in English and humor
How do you solve a geopolitical problem like Kim Jong Un? Containment? Embargoes? Propaganda? Regime change? Synchronized baseball?
Designer Yuri Suzuki chases his dreams through sound
As a boy in the 1980s, Yuri Suzuki fell under the spell of video games and his father's record collection. The family home was in bustling Shibuya Ward, near the border with Shinjuku, and the influence of global cultures within its walls was strong. Both parents were in publishing — his mother editor in chief of Soen, the seminal fashion magazine — and their tastes broad. Imports ranged from the classics to the avant-garde, with a tilt toward American popular culture. So young Yuri took indirect life lessons watching videotapes of "Saturday Night Live" as well as "MTV." His touchstones included both U.S. TV personality Mister Rogers and Italian music producer Giorgio Moroder. You could say he didn't fit in at school. ...
