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Design

Picks from TDW

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The latest edition of my old Japan Times “On: Design” column — now written by my ex-editor, Mio Yamada — covers a few of Mio’s picks from last week’s Tokyo Design Week. Pictured, Makoto Suzuki’s Capa Chair. Here she also offers her highlights from TDW itself.

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Architecture Art Design Events Photography

PKN at TDW 2016

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I’m sure we’ll soon get a full album of photos, but here’s the big traditional crowd shot that was taken at last week’s annual Tokyo Design Week edition of PechaKucha Night. Since leaving Tokyo, it’s always bittersweet for me to see these, as our TDW event was always one of the big highlights of the year, and I have quite a few memories of dealing with all of the extra work that goes into producing an event like this — compared to the monthly events at SuperDeluxe that are a cakewalk in comparison — as well as being in the back and running the slides on a laptop, with presenters coming in last minute to request changes or to fix something. Good times.

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Meta Personal

2005

This weekend I managed to finish going through the posts of 2005 (all 1063 of them). As I was going through these posts, I could see that it was a really important year for me. My first professional writing work started in 2004 as I became editor of MoCo Tokyo (a spinoff site to MoCo Loco, where I was also a contributor), and then at the very end of that year I started my monthly anime and design columns for Tokyo Q, but it was in 2005 that I started my monthly “On Design” column for The Japan Times, wrote for Gawker’s Gizmodo and Gridskipper, and also wrote some other freelance pieces. I’d definitely point to that year as the start of my writing career.

It was also the year I started writing almost weekly round-ups of Japanese magazines — which years later led to me starting the now-defunct The Magaziner website. It was also the year of me and Jesper’s first big collaboration together, in the form of our “Mamma Gun” exhibition/event at Cafe Pause, part of Swedish Style/Tokyo Design Week.

I’m pretty thankful that I can go through archives of my life like this, and see exactly how things happened and evolved.

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Uncategorized

Tee Dee Double You

If Tokyo Design Week takes place and you’re not there, does it really take place?

Apologies for the ridiculous statement, but as this year’s edition of Tokyo Design Week kicks off, it indeed feels incredibly strange to see it happen from afar. Even though in recent years I’d grown a bit disillusioned with a lot of what I’d see on display, there’s no denying that it consistently played a huge part within the evolution of what I did while based in Tokyo.

I got my start by blogging about art and design in Japan (more specifically, Tokyo) and I can indeed recall attending Tokyo Design Week (or rather the collection of design-related events that took place at that time, not specifically under that banner) during my first few years in Tokyo, and how it contributed to my enthusiasm for Japanese design.

Later, as I started carving a path in writing professionally about design – first for a now-defunct site called Tokyo Q, and then for The Japan Times through my monthly “On Design” column – I’m fairly certain that Tokyo Design Week (or more specifically at the time, “Tokyo Designers Week”) was the first major event for which I had a press pass to cover.

It didn’t take long before my desire to place myself more closely inside this scene had me collaborating with my good friend Jesper Larsson on showcases/exhibitions for Swedish design, that were part of the Swedish Style events that used to take place during TDW. It was incredibly exciting and satisfying to play a direct role in helping designers to take part in the week-long design festivities, and it also led to some fantastic connections with all manner of creative people. And who could forget those fantastic parties at the Swedish Embassy during TDW – always the best.

The last phase of my relationship with Tokyo Design Week was the most direct one, and it involved the annual PechaKucha Night that we produced for them in the big dome, which would end up being the biggest event of the week. It still doesn’t feel natural to see posts about this week’s PechaKucha Night at TDW, and not being the one who has to make sure that we have all of the presentations from our presenters, that all the tech is in place for the night itself…

So yeah, this time of the year coming around without a Tokyo Design Week to take in or to take part in is a bigger shock than I expected.

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Architecture Design Events Meta

Global PechaKucha Day – Inspire Japan

If you’ve been to the front page of this site sometime this week (I have to assume that many of you reading this in your feed reader), then more than likely you’ve noticed the giant banner I have there now. It’s for the big Global PechaKucha Day – Inspire Japan event I’ve been working on over the past few weeks, set to happen this Saturday (April 16). I alluded to it in a recent post, but if you don’t know about it, it’s a big charity event we’ve put together, bringing together the PechaKucha community — we’re 404 cities strong, as of this writing — for a day/night of events all over the world, with the goal of raising funds for reconstruction efforts in Japan. As with last year for Haiti, we’re teaming up with Architecture for Humanity.

The core of the event is on Saturday, with a whole bunch of cities holding PKNs, and a lot of them will be streaming live as well — just go to the Inspire Japan site on the day of the event, and whatever is currently streaming live should be up at the top of the site. But our Inspire Japan efforts will also span all of April and May, and we’re inviting organizers of all PKNs during this period to collect donations — because this all came together so suddenly, many cities were not able to re-schedule already planned events, and some just found it difficult to organize something on the 16th.

Here in Tokyo, instead of our regular home of SuperDeluxe, the event will be held at the Roppongi Hills Tokyo City View (52nd floor), with doors opening at 17:00, and presentations starting at 18:00 (it should run until around 21:30 or so). Entry will be a minimum donation of 1000 yen — you’re of course welcome to leave more. To access the event, you’ll need to go to the 3rd floor to get a free ticket to get to the top, and we’ll have signs there to point you to the event space (where you’ll pay the entry fee).

This will also be the first time I present in quite a while — I only presented once at a PechaKucha Night, 3-4 years ago at a special Tokyo Design Week edition with my friend Jesper (it was about the Swedish Style event we had organized at Cafe Pause). This time, I’ll be teaming with Ian, who is responsible for all of the Inspire Japan graphics you’ve been seeing. The presentation will pretty much be about design efforts to raise money for Japan aid, based on that post I started a few days after the quake, as well as the follow-up I did in last month’s edition of my “On Design” column for The Japan Times. For his part of the presentation, Ian will cover the projects he worked on to help raise awareness and collect donations.

The event should be amazing — I mean, you can’t really beat that view — and you’ll also be contributing to reconstruction efforts, so I urge you all to come and support us. Also, if you’d like to help spread the word, feel free to get and use Inspire Japan banners and ads that Ian created, as well as a very cool (and workable) QR code that SET Japan designed for us.

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Design Events

DesignTide in the Clouds

Didn’t get to attend last week’s DesignTide? Dezeen posts a few photos of this year’s space design, which was again by Hiroshima-based architect Makoto Tanijiri (Suppose Design Office). I don’t think the photos quite capture how well it worked though — most of the time, when in a booth, you couldn’t really see what was in the nearby booths, which encouraged exploration (versus quick scanning).

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Design

Trio Stool

During last week’s DesignTide, Mile introduced their new Trio stool, which can also double as a small table. Via Designboom.

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Design Events

Happening at Tokyo Design Week 2009

  • Yes, it’s that time of the year again, Tokyo Design Week is just around the corner, this year kicking off on a Friday instead of the traditional Wednesday, running October 30 to November 3. Best way to find out about everything that’s going on is to pick up the guides to the events — they should be popping up around town soon — and of course to check out the official event websites: DesignTide, 100% Design Tokyo, Tokyo Designers Week, Swedish Style, and Design Touch.
  • So instead of “Happening in Tokyo” event posts, time to start some “Happening in TDW” ones. I still don’t know how much I’ll be able to take in because of my back (it’s much better, if still painful at times), but I’m still going to try and sample as much as I can.
  • Currently I’m most looking forward to the DesignTide opening party on Friday night (although I believe it’s not a public event). It’s always a good opportunity to get a first glimpse at everything, and chat up the attendees.
  • More of a pre-TDW event, this month’s PechaKucha Night in Tokyo (Vol. 66) happens this Wednesday (October 28), and it will of course have a TDW flavor to it. This will also be the first PKN I attend in quite a few months, so happy to be able to join up with team PKN again.
  • Berlin’s DMY will be participating at DesignTide, with products and prototypes from 14 Berlin-based designers.
  • Designboom presents Hermès Paris: “A design adventure from high-quality bags to helicopters and yachts, an online graphic competition for the upcoming tie collection and the world preview in Tokyo of new high-tech suitcases. A presentation of the most recent development inside the Hermès design department, and a Q&A with design director of Hermès Gabriele Pezzini conducted by Birgit Lohmann (Designboom).” It happens at the design conference/forum space at the 100% Design Tokyo venue in Jingu Gaien on October 31 (12:00-13:00).
  • And of course, don’t miss the Designboom Mart, again a part of 100% Design Tokyo.
Categories
Design

Isolation Unit + Karimoku

Isolution Unit teams with furniture manufacturer Karimoku for a new collection, to be previewed at next week’s 100% Design Tokyo (October 30 to November 3). More details and images over at Designboom.

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Design Events

Nagoya Design Week 2009

Tokyo Design Week is less than a month away (October 30-November 3), but you can get an earlier hit of design event-ness if you head out to Nagoya next week for Nagoya Design Week 2009 (October 14-18).