Five design teams are going to showcase their works at Milan Design Week 2009.
As a director of this exhibition, I first came up with the idea of using a theme of "colour".
It is striking that we hardly see vivid colour in contemporary Japanese design or architecture. Most of the designers prefer a white or clear finish or make use of the material's own texture. They hesitate using a specific colour, because they sense it as an obstruction to the clarity of their concept. This often results in choosing neutral colours, compatible with the majority of people. In fact, in Japan, most products are released in a neutral colour and colour variations are developed later on.
I found from my interviews with many designers that also European designers have difficulties in applying color. They tend to postpone this process to the last minute or even prefer to delegate it to somebody else.
For this exhibition, I wanted to challenge these young designes with an assignment that would be demanding even to an experienced designer. I brought the “color stage” to the very beginning of the whole process: the colour scheme is determined in the first place, so that all other stages of the design process are based on it.
The designers agreed with this concept and interestingly evolved the theme to “complementary colours”, adding the issue of oppositeness.
Non of the products has been finalized until now, but the projects have advanced to the point that they can be anticipated. MILE’s approach is very straight, as they are trying to include the optical effect of the complementary colours into the nature of the product. Jin Kuramoto’s aim is to let the colours take out the solidity of the three-dimensional object. The focus of Teruhiro Yanagihara is on realizing an object only based on the characteristic of complementary colours without addidional function, material or form. Emiko Oki’s ideas, inspired by the bookstore where their products are exhibited, are going to be utterly covered with complementary colours, and Hironao Tsuboi is exploring the possibilities of a transparency, that can be achieved only through the use of complementary colours.
Our goal is to find a way of coexistence of two opposite things, not to privilege one from the other or neutralizing them together. These five teams are selected because I believe that through this project, they are able to bring the design of this century one step further.
Eizo Okada.
Exhibition Director
Design Director. Associate Professor, Kyoto Institute of Technology. Born in Fukuoka in 1970. Received Ph.D degree from Chiba University. While studying on sociological design process at the institute, he produces design projects such as Ribbon Project, DEROLL Commissions, and other projects with some manufacturers in Japan. He was involved in planning the Second Nature exhibition at the 21_21 Design Sighht (Tokyo, 2008). Okada is also the founder of dezain.net, blog about design and architecture, and contributes articles to design magazine.
