News & Stories

When apartment blocks are built of asparagus

by Sandra Hofmeister

Designs by architect Terunobu Fujimori present an encounter between the archaic and the futuristic. Up to now, all of his buildings have been in Japan. Now Villa Stuck in Munich is presenting his first major show in Europe. And Fujimori has even created a vision made of asparagus and other eatables especially for the Bavarian capital.

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News & Stories | Salone del Mobile 2012

Serving ideas

The success of Japanese designer Oki Sato is closely bound up with the Milan Salone Satellite. The straightforward approach to various design disciplines he experienced there was his inspiration when he set up his company Nendo. Ayako Kamozawa discusses this with Oki Sato.

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News & Stories

The thing itself

An exhibition at Château de Boisbuchet is presenting "naked” aluminum objects from Japan, thereby portraying an episode of cultural history and the qualities of anonymous Japanese design.

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News & Stories

Ideas are revolutions

Eco-management systems, eco-labels, sustainability certificates – the need for information on ecological aspects of production is growing by the day. Some companies, such as Italian manufacturer Arper, have already pinned proof of the eco-friendliness of their products to their masts.

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News & Stories

Living in nine tubo

The symposium on "Regionalism in current industrial design from Japan and Europe" offered an opportunity to converse with designer Makoto Koizumi who does not yet have a presence outside Japan. In conversation with Nina Reetzke he explains what his furniture collection "Tetsubo" and his new interpretations of the "9tubohouse" are all about.

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News & Stories

The Spirit of the Things

by Nora Sobich

Japan's great tradition of cultured handicrafts is not just a matter of nostalgia. In contemporary Japanese design centuries-old processing techniques are undergoing a revival.

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News & Stories

Anonymous, reduced and good to have

by Nina Reetzke

Japanese designer Nendo adheres to the following principle in his design: giving people a small “!” moment and a little surprise. One of his latest projects is the “K%” label, which brings brands such as “Muji”, “Plusminuszero” and “1%” to mind.

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News & Stories | Light+Building 2012

Light is just light

What is the difference between light and lighting? With “Verto”, Naoto Fukasawa has designed a luminaire for Belux that is based upon the principle of reflection. Nina Reetzke met the Japanese designer for a chat.

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News & Stories

Modernity via Katsura

by Horant Fassbinder

A great many Western artists, designers and architects have looked to Japan for inspiration for their works. Bruno Taut spent three and a half years in Japan and during that time wrote numerous treatises, which were recently published in German for the first time. The Katsura Imperial Villa, for instance, was in Taut's eyes the perfect expression of a refined form of Modernism that had been carefully thought through down to the very last detail.

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News & Stories

The City as Built Forest

Thanks to the last architecture biennial a new generation of Japanese architects became known in Europe. One of them was Sou Fujimoto, who previously drew attention with his “Tokyo Apartment” and the“Primitive Future House”. Ayako Kamozawa met Sou Fujimoto in Tokyo and talked to him about his concept of order.

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News & Stories | 12th Architecture Biennale – exclusively presented by Villeroy & Boch Tiles

Tokyo in doll’s house chaos

by Axel Simon

Japan's pavilion finds and unusual and surprising way to celebrate the "Metabolist" movement, which kicked off about half a century ago. Instead of space capsules and concrete shelving full of living units you can peruse doll's-house-sized models and an insightful presentation of Tokyo as the city of permanent change.

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Architecture | Invisibility – Out of Sight

Given flowing form

by Patrick Barton

How Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa open out their buildings.

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News & Stories

An essential truth in the chaos of multiplicity

by Nora Sobich

The fifth collection of the Japanese design company “plusminuszero” - As for its design maxim, the company has traded in the good old “Form follows function” principle which is always trundled out when a rationale for minimalism is needed, and has exchanged it for a new mantra of industrial design: “Things that seem to have existed already but didn’t”.

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