DESIGNART TOKYO RETURNS!

With over 120 exhibitors across the city, the second edition of DESIGNART TOKYO 2018 opened on the 19th of October, bringing together the best of international creativity and high-quality craftsmanship, turning Tokyo into a design museum for the next 10 days. Its rich assembly of products and experiences from across the creative spectrum was not only for invited visitors to enjoy, but also to instigate shared future-orientated values across the board.

Aoki Akio, co-founder of DESIGNART TOKYO, said, “We believe it is important for everyone to be able to access design and art, events like DESIGNART TOKYO that allow creativity to be embedded into our lives and enjoyed every day. There is a lot of potentials for design and art to help build relationships in our communities and ease social problems. With the amazing technologies and ideas available in Japan, we believe it is an important responsibility to utilize these in our modern world cleverly. For that, it is necessary to industrialize literacy and the market to raise good things. That's why we do festivals for the future.”

Also returning to Tokyo, is our wonderful design friend, co-founder of the Milan-Tokyo based design studio Mist-O, Mr. Tommaso Nani. His highlights of DESIGNART TOKYO 2018 included "HAY TOKYO" at Omotesando's GYRE building, the Danish furniture and accessories brand's first store in Japan. Although some might be quite familiar with their products, Tommaso was there to check out Jo Nagasaka (of Schemata Architects) who designed the "very simple, modern and stylish" interior.

Another familiar face at DESIGNART TOKYO was Japanese designer (Milan based), Kensaku Oshiro. The designer finally got the chance to go for local brands, resulting in the wooden chair Sweep designed for E'Interiors - a furniture store that not only stocked Italian brands like Boffi, DePadova, etc. but also produces their own original collection. 

The "Swedish Design Moves Tokyo" exhibition also caught Tommaso's eye. Located at World Kita Aoyama Building, the exhibition is actually the first of annual juried award Ung Svensk Form (Young Swedish Design). It showcased Swedish architecture, craft, fashion, art and design in collaboration with spatial designs of STRING® and fashion brand DRESSTERIOR. From a visitor's standpoint, it was a feast for the eyes with a good mix of craft and design.

Experimental designs have also gotten the buzz at DESIGNART TOKYO this year, particularly with both "Material Design Exhibition 2018" and "Experimental Creations". The former is an exhibition that, as the name suggests, one that presented new uses of materials from 6 teams of companies and designers. One of the most noteworthy is Shinya Yoshida's work. Focusing on elastic and transparent properties of Thermoplastic Elastomer created by Mitsubishi Chemical, Yoshida uses injection molding and 3D printing to create samples of lamps that change shapes. The final products are quite simple yet elegant.

If you're looking for upcoming designers, DESIGNART TOKYO introduced a program to exhibit young designers and artists in an initiation called 'Under-30'. Whilst it might sound a little like SaloneSatellite in Milan, its biggest difference was how exhibitors were scattered in established spaces around the city. This rigorous search for the best will undoubtedly be an adventure for some.

Last but not least, the "Meets" exhibition at the newly opened New Valley furniture shop in Daikanyama also made some waves. By using a fairly new material called "CLT" (i.e. Cross-Laminated Timber), five new talented designers and artists in different genres were able to inspire and collaborate with each other to produce amazing new work. Among the best are Industrial designer Shinya Oguchi's simple but powerful iconic chair "U", and the "Sakan" low table by product designer Yukihiro Yamaguchi which comes with an impressive texture of solid walls with a polished clay feeling.

 

For more news about DESIGNART TOKYO, click here.