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Design News 267

DESIGN NEWS 267

('04.9.10)

Browse the Design History from 1980's to the Present

System kitchens born from fascination with materials

Design of the Yokohama Minatomirai Line, a subway suggesting an overground city

Feature : Designing Safety
Browse the Design History from 1980's to the Present return

After the days of the bubble economy when true design was nowhere to be found, as exemplified by ‘TOKYO STYLE’, the magazine media and select shops led the way to a boom in architectural design, and in the 90's the environment surrounding Japanese design underwent a dramatic transformation. The question arises, what did the design world accomplish during this period? Compared with architects such as Tadao Ando, Toyoo Ito, SANAA, along with Rem Koolhaas, Frank O. Gehry, Jean Nouvel and many others all over the world who have gone beyond the boom of post modernism and are taking a renewed look at modernism, the design world, especially in Japan, has simply been trying to keep up with values created in the marketplace. Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the Japanese design world in the 1990's was the worldwide promulgation of the concept of universal design. But after that? Is it enough that design has become an important tool in promoting brand strategies? Isn't there a need for postmodernism in the future?
Kazuo Kawasaki makes the insist that design is not added value, it is total value. If this is so, today's designers will have to continue battling to prevent design from simply becoming a tool used to distinguish one thing from another, something that is rewritable. The reverse psychology of No Design is starting to lose its impact. It is not enough to allow the yearning for what lies at the root to end as nothing more than the mood of the times. In many cases value is produced by editing, but there are also values that are beyond the ability of editing, and I am firmly convinced, as someone who has himself been involved in editing magazines, that only designers should create the values beyond editing.
Keiichiro Fujisaki is a journalist who has written many monographs on design for magazines such as DESIGN NEWS, CASA BRUTUS and DESIGN no GENBA. In this article he takes a look at developments in the world of design from the 1980's down to the present and considers precisely what Japanese design has achieved.

Keiichiro Fujisaki, Design Journalist
System kitchens born from fascination with materials return

The LEGACESS CRYSTAL SERIES is based on an approach entirely different from that used in the development of system kitchens in the past. The key points in the design of the CRYSTAL SERIES are the development of epoxy resin materials with the emphasis on transparency and design that makes maximum use of these materials. In the case of the CRYSTAL SERIES, the design focus isn't on system kitchens with a comprehensive array of functions, but rather on the materials themselves, specifically on the texture possessed by the materials and the pursuit of transparency. In this sense, the central place in the development process is occupied with the question of how the materials are to be incorporated into the manufacturing process. A remarkable feature of these product is therefore the way in which design has taken the lead in the development of materials.
In this article Takeshi Kaneda, designer of the CRYSTAL SERIES, discusses the design of this series, beginning with the development original epoxy resin materials.

Takeshi Kaneda , Senior Designer, Industrial Design Center, TOTO Ltd.
Design of the Yokohama Minatomirai Line, a subway suggesting an overground city return

The Minatomirai Line opened in February this year. It's a very attractive line wholly different from Japan's existing subway lines. It consists of only five stations starting at Yokohama Station, but it takes passengers directly from Shibuya right to the heart of the city of Yokohama. The line goes from the Minatomirai 21 district, where redevelopment is proceeding apace, and passes through the Kannai district to Chinatown. It's great fun in that it provides easy access to all of Yokohama's top tourist attractions, but the highly distinctive design of each of the stations is fascinating for designers. In general, the design of subway stations is carried out by design offices associated with civil engineering organizations. However, in the case of the Minatomirai Line, design of each of the stations was entrusted to a different architect.
The upshot is the emergence of high-quality station buildings that that inspire the traveler to get off at each station simply to enjoy the sight of each of the buildings.
One of the reason to the appeal of these station buildings is their structure, consisting as it does of an unprecedented type of large atrium space. This plentiful space is based on the common concept of creating an urban-style gallery. It has been designed with the idea of dragging an overground urban environment into an underground space. The large space generates a sense of openness that belies its position underground and imparts the attributes of signs to the spatial environment. It makes it instantaneously clear precisely where you are at any one moment and where you are heading.
In this article, the environmental designer Kazuo Tanaka takes a look at the design features of each station on the Minatomirai Line from the standpoint of public design.

Kazuo Tanaka, Designer, GK sekkei Inc.
Feature : Designing Safety return

The desire to live safely is one of our most basic desires. But we haven't yet manage to realize this desire.
Far from it, what with the increase in violent crime and medical mishaps, the occurrence of problems related to security of information, and the ever encroaching ageing of society, the risks facing us in our immediate environment are becoming more extensive and more unpredictable.
As a consequence, questions of safety and security are once again becoming more and more pressing.
Danger lurks in every corner of daily life, even in our homes, which should by all rights provide the safest of all environments. The number of accidents of infants and aged people resulting in death in the home in fact exceeds the number of deaths occurring as a consequence of traffic accidents. Accidents may occur in the living room, on the stairs or in the bathroom. More than a half of all such accidents involve products of some kind. And almost seven out of ten are connected with problems related to the design of the products and faulty use or inattentiveness on the part of the user. These are problems intimately connected with design.
In this feature we take a look at the concept of safety −one of the keywords of our era−from the standpoint of design and present outstanding products and services ranging from children's goods to architectural structures which have been planned with consideration to safety. We also examine product development aimed at preventing human error, interface design and other design approaches related to usability with a view to exploring how best to tackle product development and design activities in the future.

Edited by Design News and Eizo Okada, Design Journalist

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