Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization

Design Multiplicity

Design News has been planning a discussion in which the participants would discuss how to interpret design during the 1990s.

Five designers, artists and architects who occupy leading positions in their respective fields debated a variety of questions such as the features of contemporary products, interior design and architecture, the actual achievements of design during the 1990s, and the nature of the strategy and approach which will be required in the future in order to realize the works and products which designers aim to create. This report is a summary of the discussion.

The discussion revolved around the features of contemporary design with "multiplicity" as the key concept. Among the topics touched upon are the work of artists such as Takashi Murakami and Michi Nara, product design from the "Aibo" robot to Mujirushi Ryohin and Postpet, the anthology of photographs by Kyoichi Tsuzuki entitled "Tokyo Style," and the work of Philippe Starck.

In the series of reports entitled "Imaginary Household Electrical Appliances" which began in Issue 246, we have been focusing on designers active in a variety of fields to discuss their vision of household electrical appliances and to visualize their ideal products as "Imaginary Household Electrical Appliances." These are then being presented in this magazine and on the Internet. The idea is then actually to create these products if sufficient interest is shown by consumers.

In this issue we will be focusing on architects who design housing in which household electrical appliances are installed and to introduce "Imaginary Household Electrical Appliances Devised by Architects." We take a look at the concept of household electrical appliances envisaged by architects, whose methodology is located at the opposite extreme from the methods premised upon mass production used in the manufacture of these products.

We present cross-generational interviews with designers in their seventies, forties and thirties, namely Kazuo Shinohara, Jun Aoki, Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham.

A survey on the use of patents carried out among the top 300 Japanese companies which have acquired patents has shown that almost 70 percent of registered patents are "sleeping patents," i.e. patents which are not actually being used. To the background of an age when great importance is placed upon patents, moves are increasingly afoot to review and use these sleeping patents as managerial resources. Medium and small companies subcontracting to the development of original products, and such companies are beginning to show considerable interest in the development of new products using these sleeping patents.

In this report, Koji Anno, who is one of the leading figures active in this area, discusses the current situation as regards the use of sleeping patents, ranging from the measures being taken by the Japanese Patent Office of the MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) to examples of how medium and small companies are making use of these patents. He also discusses how sleeping patents can be used in the development of new products and the role of design, presenting examples of his own development projects.