Categories
Design

Cacdo

Well this seems like a pretty big deal for Nendo. As Spoon & Tamago reports, it has teamed up with Dentsu to form a new business design agency called Cacdo (to be run by Nendo). I’ve been following Oki Sato and Nendo for pretty much the whole time I was covering design in Japan, from when he was producing a few products a year, and so it’s pretty amazing to see how big a presence Nendo has takenĀ in the Japan design scene during that time.

Categories
Design Manga

A Desk for Manga Artists

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Here’s another great post on Spoon & Tamago that tells the story of the creation by designer Oki Sato (Nendo) of a desk specifically designed with manga artists in mind, part of a collaboration with manga creator Yusei Matsui.

Categories
Design Stores

Hermes Kyoto

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Spoon & Tamago highlights the beautiful new Hermes pop-up shop and event space in Kyoto, which will be open for 9 months. It was designed by Nendo alum Koichiro Oniki.

Categories
Design Events Photography

Exhibition Design by Nendo

I first previewed it a while back, but here’s a better look at the exhibition design by Nendo created for last month’s “Kanazawa World Craft Triennial 2010 Pre-event” at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. Photos are by the always amazing Daici Ano, pretty much “the” name in architectural photography.

The design for a exhibition of 62 craft objects by 50 artisans at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, in western Japan. The objects’ materials range widely, including glass, wood, ceramics, metal and cloth. A variety of techniques were used in their creation, and they range widely in size. For the exhibition design, then, we chose the opposite strategy. Small mass-produced home-use greenhouses give a sense of order to the space and provide visitors with a flat perspective from which to view the exhibition, allowing the rich variety of the objects to stand out.

The greenhouses are made completely of glass, and each comes with its own shelving and pre-installed wiring for lighting. They are inexpensive, perfect for small budgets, and are easily assembled with only a screwdriver. It took only one day to assemble all 62 of the boxes. They can be broken down and stored after the exhibition. This not only eliminates nearly all waste from the exhibition fixtures, but also allows for possible reuse during the the Kanazawa World Craft Triennale 2010.

Categories
Design Events

Ghost Stories

A few photos from Nendo‘s solo exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, “Ghost Stories, New Designs from Nendo.” The show runs until January 10.

An exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, featuring four new designs. Long rectangular slashes of windows run around the walls and ceiling of the gallery space we were given. We decided not to build any walls that would keep visitors from enjoying the windows and the changing light that filters into the gallery.

The products, along with samples that convey a sense of the production process sit on pre-existing white stands, surrounded by small, 5mm-diameter white stickers affixed to the floor around them. The stickers provide a gradation effect, as though the stands are melting into the larger space. The overall effect of the installation design is to maintain the space’s specificity, while intensifying the presence of each new work.

Categories
Design Events

Nendo and Moleskine

Nendo is joins the “Detour” Moleskine exhibition — running October 16 to November 4 at the MoMA Design Store in Tokyo — with the piece pictured above.

Commenting on the contribution, Nendo explains:

By cutting the pages of the sketchbook to create a three-dimensional landscape, we wanted to show the way that sketches function in the space between two and three dimensions, and to present the sketchbook itself as a “place.”

Categories
Design Events

Exhibition Design in Kanazawa by Nendo

Nendo is designing the exhibition space for the upcoming “The Current State of Kanazawa Crafts” show, to be held at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, October 13-25. The exhibition acts as a Kanazawa World Crafttriennial 2010 pre-event.

Categories
Design MoCo Loco TB.Movel

This Week at MoCo Loco

This week’s Tokyo post at MoCo Loco is up, covering the new Iida phones (above, Naoto Fukasawa’s PRISMOID), Ryohei Yoshiyuki‘s “Time of the Sky” watch, and Nendo‘s Music Cage speaker.