The latest incarnation of Tokyo Design Week—the annual celebration of the best, brightest and future of contemporary Japanese art, architecture, and design—was struck by tragedy this year, when a fire at one of the exhibitions on the penultimate day of the two-week event sadly claimed the life of a five-year-old boy and injured several others. Naturally, the final day of the event, which was planned as two six-day sessions between October 26 and November 7, was canceled. The report that follows was written after a visit to Tokyo Design Week several days before the accident. We would like to offer our sincere condolences to the family of the victim and all those affected.
Tokyo Design Week once again proved to be a creative highlight on Tokyo’s event calendar. With approximately 700 exhibitors and in excess of 100,000 visitors in attendance over the course of two six-day sessions between October 26 and November 7, the event brought together a diverse range of architects and designers, students and colleges, independent creatives and major corporations with an equally varied mix of exhibitions, special events, parties and competitions.
While the format of many of the attractions at this year’s TDW will have been familiar to Design Week veterans, the most notable new development was the visually striking Air Tent exhibition, an outdoor collection of 4m x 4m translucent plastic domes containing collaborations between local colleges, companies and prominent Japanese creatives. To give just a couple of examples, Kengo Kuma—the architect behind the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games stadium—teamed up with cosmetics firm Kose to create Paper Snow, an Air Tent filled with white particles fluttering and dancing in the air, while contemporary artist Noburo Tsubaki worked with students at Kyoto University of Art and Design to produce a piece called Tideland Cat, which expressed the movement of a cat in stop-motion style.
Paper Snow, an Air Tent filled with white particles fluttering and dancing in the air
Promoting young and upcoming creators
In fact, much of this year’s TDW was geared toward opportunities for students and up-and-coming talent. With the March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake still fresh in the minds of many Japanese, as part of the School Exhibition, one group of students from the Human Design College exhibited an easy-to-construct disaster shelter made with just several pieces of flat wood and a tent-like cover that was also designed to function as a private, relaxing space within crowded refugee centers – images of which were regularly broadcast on Japanese TV in the aftermath of 3/11. As the students explained: “Earthquakes often occur in Japan, so it’s not a surprise being affected by one, yet a lot of design focuses on disaster prevention, not post-disaster needs.”
Youth was also highlighted through the 7th Able Space Design Competition, organized by TDW’s main sponsor, real estate brokerage Able and Partners Inc, and with judges including Pritzker Prize winner Toyo Ito. Under the theme “future room”, the competition featured five proposals for compact, single-room living, including the eventual finalists—who got to build full-scale models for the event—Takuto Hashimoto of Yokohama National University’s Institute of Innovation, who incorporated undulating flooring that acts as seating and sleeping spaces, and Shinobu Ito and Asaku Kitamura of Shibaura Institute of Technology, who created a split-level room with sunken semi-private areas for bathing, sleeping and cooking.
And with the 100 Creators Exhibition, there were opportunities for young and independent creators from Japan and overseas to gain exposure, too, with 200 professionals in all (100 during each six-day session) working in areas such as product design, interiors, art, graphic design, and fashion setting up small displays. Among the many highlights, there was Canada-based designer Mario Sabljak’s angular wooden Flavour Furniture (a mix, he says, of art, sculpture and functional furniture), while Japanese architect and artist Mitsuyasu Yokota displayed his WaGlass, a form of decorative glass-working that incorporates the classic Japanese designs and patterns found on kimono fabrics—Yokota’s way of keeping traditional art alive in contemporary society.
Japanese architect and artist Mitsuyasu Yokota’s WaGlass
Interactive experiences
At the hands-on Interactive Exhibition—billed as “design you see…design you can experience”—there was a blend of smaller producers and major corporations showing off some very swish new concepts, including Sony and their much talked about FES watch, which uses e-paper technology to allow users to switch the look of their watch face and strap between 24 possible black and white designs at the touch of a button. Unusually, the product was crowdfunded through Sony’s First Flight platform, part of the company’s Seed Acceleration Program to gain external support for and expedite employee ideas.
Neighboring the Interactive area, the Creative Life Exhibition—focused on business to business match-ups as well as business to consumer communication—showcased a variety of new technologies. That included 3M, Japan’s latest surface decoration films – Scotchtint tinted window films with anti-shatter properties, Fasara glass films available in frosted treatments, dot patterns and other finishes with a range of transparencies to control light and enhance privacy, and inkjet printable graphic Scotchteal film for interior and exterior walls and floors, as well as local telecom giant NTT Docomo’s “1 in a million” booth, where visitors could mold smartphone designs by hand using a 3-D projection; according to staff at the booth, the concept being to allows users “to experience the unseen time and trial and error that goes into making a one in a million smartphone”. You can see the results of visitors’ efforts here.
Learn more about Tokyo Design Week and dozens of affiliated Design Week events elsewhere in the world.
“Making the Most of Employee Talent” via Sony.net
