“There are some products that don’t necessarily need to be redesigned, like the chair, because you can find good ones that people have used for a long time,” said Fukasawa. “But even a chair can be made to fit our lives better. When I design a chair, I really try to make it chair-like by looking for its center. Every product has a core of awareness, and if you take that as the center of the new product, you can fix the bad part to make a better chair.”
Déjà Vu Chair
Naoto Fukasawa 2006
After reading the article that Porro has posted yesterday, I just decided to post something more as well since I have also been looking into Fukasawa’s designs recently.
Anyway, just feel that I agreed a lot with what Mr. Fukasawa shared above about furniture design. My students are currently working on the upcoming Singapore Furniture Design Award. I noticed that what most of them are doing is trying their best to break the traditional form of a chair, which I am not sure if that is really a good way to approach design. I know as designers, we should challenge the norms and conventions. Yet is it really necessary to be totally radical in order to be different or to produce a nice piece of design? Personally, I don’t think so.
The following is something I found in ±0, that is written by Fukasawa, ±0 Design Director.
Shared Sense
I’m searching for a shared sense, one that should already exist. To use a metaphor, it’s something akin to the gaps in a jigsaw puzzle, but which is not one-dimensional. It’s like the gaps within a set of nested boxes, into which time, space, action, customs, culture, information, education and thought have all been poured. I believe that finding these gaps means looking not at people or objects themselves, but rather at the space around them or their outlines. I don’t like the idea of forcibly changing the shapes of things under the guise of “creation”. Gaps in spaces are things that occur naturally; they are soft or pliable. I want to strengthen this kind of pliability within my own design consciousness, this pliability that accepts a wide range of design ideas. ±0 is a mark that expresses this idea of pliability without there being gaps, much like a cluster of bubbles stuck together. A ±0 that is in a fixed state is simply inconceivable. Just like a solid body whose cells change, designs that fill the gaps are limitless. As such, ±0 can also be seen as a receptacle into which the knowledge of designers who have found this invisible yet existent shape can be placed.“Something that seems to exist but didn’t”
This is the evaluation of ±0 designs that we often hear. The phrase “something that seems to exist but doesn’t” is a good one, and leads us to imagine that perhaps there is a shared image between myself and the user about what they want before I design. I’m just laying out this thing that seemed to exist but didn’t for everyone. You could say that the design comes not from me but from others. ±0 is trying to create good things in spheres that, while being considered necessary by everyone, haven’t really had “design” applied to them.
Okay, last point. ±0 has just released its latest 2007 collection. I fall in love with its new coffee and tea maker! Do check out on their lastest designs here.
