DESIGNART TOKYO 2019 Is Here

DESIGNART TOKYO is back with its 3rd edition from October 18th to 27th, 2019! With over 100 participating venues, this innovative crossover of art, design, fashion, and food transforms all of Tokyo into a museum of design and art. 

Buoyed by the resounding success of DESIGNART TOKYO 2018 with approximately 120,000 visitors, the Art & Design Festival is aiming to have over 200,000 visitors this year. To scale up the event this year two new areas, Ginza and Shinjuku, will be used by the exhibition in addition to the Harajuku, Omotesando and Aoyama areas.

This wave of DESIGNART TOKYO will also see the launch of the “1% for Art” movement. This new initiative aims to legalize the “1% for Art” program to encourage the culture of supporting art by the whole society. DESIGNART TOKYO will launch various projects and a campaign to collect signatures to realize “1% for Art” in Japan.

DESIGNART FEATURE is the core of the festival. This year, an exhibition of artworks curated by Design Pier, a creative team from Hong Kong, is going to be held along with works by artists from all over Asia. In addition, Israel is selected as the partner country and more than 10 participants from Jerusalem Design Week (JDW) will exhibit their works. 

The festival founders have initiated the "Under-30" program to discover and support young designers and artists from various creative genres and provide a place for young creators to show their work by connecting them to shops, galleries, manufacturers.

Objects that will be unveiled at the event include a new work by interior and product designer Koichi Futamata called “Kiulu Bench” for the Finnish interior brand Artek. With the theme Landscape of Design, there will be an exhibition set to the backdrop of images by photographer Nao Tsuda as well as a series of exhibits that tell the story of the origins of design and an accompanying artist talk event. At the Cassina IXC Aoyama flagship store leading Italian modern furniture brand Cassina will be showcasing its new sofa “DRESS UP!” which was unveiled at Milano Salone this April. On the store’s second floor is a gallery that will be exhibiting works by glass craftsman Toshio Iezumi. A brand launched by a collective of 10 small workshops based in Yokohama named YOKOHAMA MAKERS VILLAGE (YMV) will be staging a retrospective of the products that received the best reactions over the past three years to AXIS Gallery.

CONDE HOUSE communicates Japan’s sense of comfort through furniture and for this year’s DEISGNART TOKYO it has invited internationally active design studio Raw Edges and product designer Jin Kuramoto to showcase their latest works.

This year's DESIGNART TOKYO will also showcase exclusive artworks and installations including Grand Seiko at Jing, Canadian visual artist MAD DOG JONES, raison d’etre” exhibition by Wakabayashi Butsugi Mfg Co,. Ltd., artworks by bonsai artist Masashi Hirao and more. Debuting this year will be Jun Murakoshi with his first solo exhibition and a world-first collaboration project between Champagne Perrier Jouet and Italian designer Andrea Mancuso.

For more on DESIGNART TOKYO 2019, click here.