PROFILE

Description

Description

Takenobu Igarashi started his career as a graphic designer in the 1970s. His alphabetical works include posters, the well-known Suntory, Meiji Dairies, CALPIS and PARCO logos, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) calendar using the axonometric (perspective) method, He also worked on products such as furniture, telephones, cutlery and clocks, as well as signage for SUNTORY HALL, both two-dimensional and three-dimensional, pursuing the possibilities of design without being bound by existing frameworks. Then, at the age of 40, he decided to move on to the next thing, and after 10 years of preparing to close his office, he became a sculptor in 1994 at the age of 50. Using a variety of materials such as wood, steel and terracotta, he has devoted himself to creating artworks using his body with nature as a motif, and is currently based at "Kazenobi" in Shintotsukawa, Hokkaido.
He has worked as a designer and sculptor for 50 years, producing a diverse range of works. It is worth noting that both design and art works are installed in universities, offices, parks, commercial facilities, train stations, observatories, factories and medical facilities, where they live and breathe in human activities. Underlying this is Igarashi's desire for his artworks to be used by people, rather than displayed as exhibits, and his desire to "enrich the everyday environment" by doing so.
Igarashi was quick to recognise the importance of archives and has been storing his work materials himself since the 1980s. He has also been involved in archive projects at Tama Art University and TAKEO, a general paper trading company, and in autumn 2023 the "IGARASHI TAKENOBU Archive" is scheduled to open at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology (KIT) as a new centre of sensitivity and education, utilising Takenobu Igarashi's research and the archive's collection. They are currently working on a programme in the hope that the archive materials will be studied and utilised by many people, just as his works are alive in the city.
Among the people PLAT has met in its interviews, this is probably the first person who has been thinking about, working on and contributing to the archive for so many years. We interviewed Mr. Igarashi about his thoughts on the archive with Ms. Sakura Nomiyama, a design historian and design researcher involved in the "IGARASHI TAKENOBU Archive" project at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology, and Ms. Asako Hada, Mr. Igarashi's assistant.

Masterpiece

Masterpiece

Graphic, Logo

Shibuya Parco Part 3 logo (1981); EXPO '85 official poster (1982); CALPIS logo (1983); MoMA poster calendar (1984-1991); Meiji Dairies logo (1986); WORLD DESIGN EXPOSITION official poster (1987); Suntory logo (1990); Tama Art University logo (1995); Sapporo Station JR Tower logo (2003); Tarokichigura logo (2005)

Products

"Cordless Telephone", Entex (1989); "'Cast Stool", Yamada Shomei Lighting (1989); "Dinnerware", Yamada Shomei Lighting (1989-1994); "MoMA Playing Cards", the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1993); "eye meganetta" Avanti (1995); "eki clock & watch" m+h unit Inc. (2005)

Sculptures

"Aluminium Alphabet Sculpture" (1983); "Hibiki', SUNTORY HALL, Tokyo (1986); "KUMO", Azabu Juban Shopping District Union, Tokyo (1996); "Lotus", Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical (now Astellas Pharma), Tokyo (1997); "Rhythm of Wave", toei Subway Daimon Station, Tokyo (2000); "Dragon Spine", Ichinosakanishi Park, Takikawa, Hokkaido (2004); "Sky Dancing", Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo (2005); "To the Sea of Premonition" TOKYO MIDTOWN, Tokyo (2006); "Komorebi" NAGOYA LUCENT TOWER, Nagoya, Aichi (2007); "Horizontal Feeling LHH" Laguna Honda Hospital, San Francisco (2008); "White Legend" Kazenobi, Shintotsukawa-cho, Hokkaido (2011); "Forest of Terminus" JR Sapporo Station paseo, Sapporo, Hokkaido (2011); "Land of intelligence" Fukuoka University Library, Fukuoka (2012); "Field of Brilliance", Shintotsukawa Town Hall, Hokkaido (2021)

Books

"Igarashi alphabets: From graphics to sculptures" ABC Verlag,Zurich (1987); "Dezain surukoto, kangaerukoto" Asahi Press (1996); "Asobu, tsukuru, kurasu – Dezaina o yamete choukokuka ninatta" Rutles（2008）; "Hajimari wa, itsumo tanoshii dezaina choukokuka igarasshi takenobu no tsukuru hibi" Hakurosya（2018）; "TAKENOBU IGARASHI:DESIGN AND FINE ART" Graphis, USA（2018）; "Takenobu Igarashi A-Z"' Thames & Hudson, UK（2020) and many others

Interview

Interview

The establishment of the "IGARASHI TAKENOBU Archive" within the Kanazawa Institute of Technology isI consider it an experimental experiment for me.

Interest in the world of design

ー　First of all, can you tell us what made you decide to make a living from design?

Igarashi　I think my uncle was a big part of that. He was an architect called Tadashi Igarashi, who was stylish, dandy, humorous and someone I admired. He was the first person in Hokkaido to obtain a first-class architectural qualification, and designed more than 500 buildings, from private residences to public facilities, mainly in Obihiro. At the time, my uncle was working alone in Obihiro, and on his way back to Sapporo where his family lived, he stopped by the Takikawa house where our family lived and told us about a property he had recently worked on. I was in primary school at the time, but I was fascinated by his interesting and fun architectural stories and looked forward to his visits every time. Somewhere along the line, I started to think that I wanted to be an architect or an engineer in the future.
About three months before the university entrance examinations started, my uncle came to our house again and told me something like this. "Architecture is good, but it's crippling in terms of colour. There is also the world of design". I had been studying hard for a university in architecture, but it was then that I first heard the word "design", changed my mind and hurriedly researched design universities. I then researched what kind of graduates there were from each university and finally decided on Tama Art University, where many of my favourite designers, such as Mr. Issey Miyake and Mr. Makoto Wada, had graduated.

ー　Have you seen the buildings designed by his uncle?

Igarashi　It was after I started working. Hokkaido is much bigger than I imagined, and Obihiro is a long way from Takikawa. 20 years ago, I continued to work in Hokkaido, which led me to make many friends, and one of them introduced me to Mr. Yutaka Oda, the then president of Rokkatei, which my uncle had designed. This led me to see many buildings designed by my uncle, including Rokkatei. Of the 500 buildings he designed in his lifetime, more than 40 are still in existence. I thought it would be a good idea to document it somehow, so I consulted the photographer Mr. Mitsumasa Fujitsuka and the architecture critic Mr. Makoto Ueda. With their help, I produced the book "Kenchikuka Igarashi Tadashi" (Nishida Syoten, 2007). The book contains a map showing the locations of 500 buildings that my uncle worked on. 500 is an amazing number. My uncle used to laugh and say that he only designed buildings when he was asked to, because he had a lot of free time.

ー　Your parents were also multi-talented people.

Igarashi　My father studied management at Hitotsubashi University and worked at the Tokyo head office of Daiichi Bank. He was fluent in languages and had a German camera and video camera, which he used to film us and our siblings. My mother studied at girls' schools in Kanazawa and Kobe and had more than 20 hobbies, including chanting, shimai dance, tea ceremony, calligraphy, watercolour painting, paper cutting, wood carving, weaving, organ playing, orchid growing and haiku writing. My father and mother used to live in Tokyo before I was born, but after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, they were hit by a huge fire and my grandfather told them to come to Hokkaido and take over instead of staying in Tokyo where it was so dangerous, so they moved to Takikawa in Hokkaido. My grandfather was born in Fukui and moved to Takikawa, Hokkaido, at the age of 16, starting out as a fish seller carrying a balance, later running a sake brewery, serving as a Hokkaido councillor and the first chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

ー　The origins of your creative world of design and art come from your uncle, who was an architect, and from growing up in a family where music, art and traditional Japanese culture were commonplace. You first entered Tama Art University with an interest in design, and while you were still a student you decided to study in the USA - what prompted you to do so?

Igarashi　Ever since I was a child, I wanted to visit different places around the world. When I was a university student in the 1960s, the dollar was 360 yen and there were still few people travelling abroad or studying abroad. There were few universities that accepted international students, and I wrote to ten schools in Europe and the USA, but only three responded. Among them, I chose the master's programme at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). At that time, a laboratory was being established at Tama Art University, so I went there as a research student in 1969.
I was already educated at the four-year Tama Art University, so at UCLA, with the understanding of my teachers, I was to study areas I had not yet experienced. I worked on social and educational research topics and learnt about ceramics and photographic printing techniques.

ー　When you returned from the US, you didn't find a job anywhere and immediately opened your own office, didn't you? I (Seki) also visited your office near that Aoyama Cemetery several times when I was working for AXIS.

Igarashi　My university professor introduced me to some well-known film companies involved in special effects and other techniques, but I wanted to work in Japan. Because I thought I could experience and absorb things at a faster pace than in the US.

ー　When you were a designer, your typography and designs are characterised by the use of the architectural perspective technique known as axonometrics (perspective). Did the presence of your uncle, whom you mentioned earlier, and the fact that you initially wanted to become an architect, have an influence on your work?

Igarashi　I think so. When I started working in Tokyo, I realised that I didn't know many graphic designers, only people in architecture and interior design, such as Mr. Shiro Kuramata and Mr. Shigeru Uchida, and I had more opportunities to work with them. Mr. Kuramata always invited us all to the opening of the shops he worked on. Besides designers, a wide variety of people from different fields, such as sculptors, painters and photographers, visited the exhibition, met each other in a natural way and absorbed various things from each other, spending an irreplaceable time there.
My first jobs were designing building signs and corporate logos. A few years later there was a boom in corporate identity (CI) and I did a lot of that work. What I was most interested in when I was a designer, which I think is a lot in architecture and engineering, was developing whole systems and integrating different things, and that was my area of expertise.

Awareness of the importance of archiving

ー　From here I would like to ask you about archiving. You have been talking about the importance of archives for quite some time. What was the impetus for this?

Igarashi　My awareness of archives was triggered by an experience when I studied for a master's degree at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I had a very big cultural shock there. At the time, one of the several libraries at UCLA kept a large collection of drawings by local architects who had made outstanding achievements, and copies were available to anyone for $1 each. They have everything from large architectural design drawings, from spaces to details. What is good about it is that even after the architect has passed away, the drawings are readily available should the need arise for minor design changes or major renovations to the buildings he worked on. The state supported this system, which I thought was wonderful. I was amazed at the cultural level at which such things were practised as a matter of course in the USA in the 1960s.

ー　Is the operating entity the library? For example, was a librarian sorting out the donated architects' drawings and selling copies of them?

Igarashi　Yes, it was. It was also just around the time when photocopying machines became popular. There were examples of archival material being stored and used successfully in various places, not just libraries.

ー　Since then, you have been storing and preserving the materials of your work yourself. When and where did you start storing them?

Igarashi　After my experience in California, I then started to interact more with Western designers and had more opportunities to see their workspaces. I saw a number of great situations where there was storage in that office space, where the materials were neatly organised and someone could go in unannounced and make a presentation. Some of them were big names like Mr. Charles Eames, and some were young designers.
However, storing an ever-increasing amount of material on a daily basis is difficult in an office in Tokyo, where land prices are high. It was around this time that I had the opportunity to get to know Mr. Yasunobu Terada (the current owner) of Warehouse TERRADA. Mr. Terada was still young and was thinking of taking on a new challenge. Me and Mr. Aijiro Wakita, a sculptor and plastic artist, often talked about how we wanted to improve the environment for creators. Then, thinking that it would be possible to realise the dream-like environment I had seen in design offices abroad in Japan, I decided to rent a warehouse after consulting Mr. Terada. From around 1980, I consciously started putting more and more of my work materials into the warehouse, and continued to do so for about 30 years. That is the majority of the archive material today.

Hada　As for his one-of-a-kind alphabet sculptures and self-produced works, he has been able to present only photographs to the world and keep the actual works with him. He has not given the work to the company, so there is a situation where Igarashi still has the actual work himself.

ー　During the "Sapporo Art Exhibition: The World of Igarashi Takenobu" held at SAPPORO ART PARK in Hokkaido in 2018, you mentioned that you found some valuable maquettes (models) in storage. Many people say that models take up a lot of space and that people are throwing them away because of the daily workload, but I heard that you were also very busy as a designer, so I imagine it must have been hard work to maintain and store your work materials during that time.

Igarashi　Simply because I am busy at work is not an excuse, in my opinion. I believe that if you want to maintain an archive, you have to make an effort anyway, under any circumstances. There is a mountain of material to learn from both the things that worked and the things that didn't. There is so much to learn, especially from failure. I think it would be great from an educational point of view if research was done into an archive of learning from such failures.

ー　In your book "Hajimari wa, itsumo tanoshii dezaina choukokuka igarasshi takenobu no tsukuru hibi" （Hakurosya, 2018）, you mentioned that you wrote not only about success stories but also about failures.

Involved in archiving projects for Tama Art University and TAKEO

ー　Tama Art University opened a facility called the Art Archives Center in 2018, which houses the materials of Mr. Makoto Wada and Mr. Koichi Sato, among others. Is your work also in the collection?

Igarashi　Some posters are in the collection.Tama Art University is my alma mater, where I served as Rector from 2011 to 2015. I was also involved in the creation of the second Faculty of Fine Arts in 1989. At the time, I realised that education for working people was not in its ideal form. Amidst the calls for such an education, I founded it with the aim of training young people in the use of computers and English. Unfortunately, it had to close in 2014.
Tama Art University turned its attention to archiving early on. As part of TAKEO 's 100th anniversary celebrations, TAKEO purchased historical posters from European countries, mainly from the 20th century, the USA and Japan in 1997, and in 1998 TAKEO and the Department of Graphic Design at Tama Art University began working together to research the poster collection, which I helped with. The posters, which are for sale because the famous Reinhold Brown Gallery in New York is closing, number about 3,200. We are building a database about it, documenting the people who participated in the collection, and young people as well as professors are taking part in the research. We have published some of the results of this research in books, and in recent years we hold an exhibition of the posters every two or three years at the TOKYO METROPOLITAN TEIEN ART MUSEUM. When I was president of Tama Art University, the Tama Art University Art Archives Center was built on the basis of these trends. There is also a space for postgraduate students to use, so I think that not only exhibitions but also a research environment is being developed.

ー　You were also involved in the creation of TAKEO ARCHIVES.

Igarashi　I am an advisor to TAKEO ARCHIVES. The collection is centred around my poster collection, which includes animal illustrations from my first solo exhibition in 1973, silkscreened three-dimensional alphabets, posters from the Summer Jazz Festival series, the WORLD DESIGN EXPOSITION, the International Exposition, Tsukuba, Japan, 1985, among others.
TAKEO ARCHIVES was established by TAKEO in 2016. As a trading company specialising in paper, they established it with the aim of contributing to the 'paper culture' of the 21st century, based on the knowledge and attempts they have accumulated since their establishment, including paper development, sample book production and records of the TAKEO PAPER SHOW and TAKEO Prize. We are currently compiling a database of materials with the aim of releasing the archives to the public in the near future, but the release is a little later than originally planned and we are still discussing what the next stage should look like in the future. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and wars have made it difficult for business worldwide, so that has probably had an impact.

"IGARASHI TAKENOBU Archive" established within the Kanazawa Institute of Technology

ー　I would like to ask you about the "IGARASHI TAKENOBU Archive", which will open at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology this autumn. Why did you decide to establish it at a school of science and technology rather than an art college?

Igarashi　I had been a design advisor at the university for nearly 40 years, and I was also interested in the possibility of introducing STEAM education (an educational concept that covers the five areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics). I had the hope that donating and archiving my work and materials here would produce interesting results.

ー　Kanazawa Institute of Technology is also famous for its Research Institute for Architectural Archives. We visited the institute twice for research purposes and found it to be very active and free-spirited, putting a lot of effort into creating a place and environment where students can spend their time in a lively way. I think it is wonderful that the "IGARASHI TAKENOBU Archive" has been established as part of these activities.
Perhaps you hope that your work and materials will be used to help students learn and be actively used in the city and in society. It may be a prospect for the future, but it will be difficult without some kind of mechanism in place to make it that way.

Igarashi　In my position as an advisor, I do my best to answer questions when I am asked for my opinion, but I feel that this is not enough. What are the thoughts and inspirations of young people such as Ms. Sakura Nomiyama, a design historian and researcher who is participating in today's interview, Ms. Asako Hada, who has been my assistant for 28 years, or the people in charge at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology? I think it is important to think about this while incorporating everyone's opinions and dreams. In the case of an art museum, I think its role is almost accomplished by exhibiting artworks, but because it is a university, I feel that it is necessary to do some more activities and editing work to overcome and pioneer something else.

ー　What kind of artworks will be housed at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology? Will they all be converted into data?

Igarashi　Almost everything I have produced in the last 50 years, both when I was a designer and since I became a sculptor. There are 5,000 items, including graphics, products, three-dimensional alphabets, crafts, sculptures, models, sketches, prints and drawings. In addition, there are tools, documents, books and other people's work that I have collected. The data conversion will be developed in the future.

ー　Will something like Mr. Igarashi's corner be created in the current building?

Nomiyama　I will explain that to you. The Kanazawa Institute of Technology has a library facility called the Library Centre, within which a new archive facility will be built to house Mr. Igarashi's work and materials related to his projects and activities, including an exhibition room, a storage room and a laboratory. It is not a corner, but a properly functioning facility, where refurbishment work has just been completed.

ー　Will Mr. Igarashi's archive material be stored there and could he hold his exhibitions and workshops there?

Nomiyama　Yes, we are. As you mentioned earlier, the schools and I are working together on various programmes to utilise the collection so that it is not exactly a dead collection. We are trying to create a situation where the collection is always on display, so that it can be widely shown, and we are also trying to create a place where it can play an educational role, for example by holding workshops using it from time to time. In this sense, the works and materials in the archive are not only the traces of Takenobu Igarashi's activities, but are also expected to play a new role as an educational resource for the creation of the future.
We also hope to form networks and collaborate with other educational institutions, design and art-related companies and organisations that are developing similar activities at home and abroad. We also envisage researching the backgrounds and social trends that led to the creation of the works, as well as the designers and artists with whom we have interacted, and presenting the results in an exhibition.

ー　In many cases we have interviewed, where the designer has passed away, the apprentice is responsible for organising the works and materials, and if the designer himself is elderly, the task is extremely difficult. For this reason, most of them are kept unorganised in cardboard boxes for the time being.
In this context, the archiving of Mr. Igarashi's work and materials has given us unprecedented hope that it will become a model for the future maintenance of design archives, as the staff and other systems are in place and, above all, she is in good health and able to communicate his wishes.

Igarashi　However, like anyone else, every year as I get older, I still feel various handicaps and they are actually showing up. I forget a lot of things and sometimes I can't even remember. So I think I have to do it in a kind of collaborative way, including the people around me. Naturally, I am always thinking about what I should be doing now, even though I may live longer, but there is a strong possibility that I may not. In a sense, the establishment of the "IGARASHI TAKENOBU Archive" at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology is an experiment for me.

Status of archive collections in national and international museums

ー　Is Mr. Igarashi's archive housed at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology, Tama Art University Art Archives Centre and TAKEO ARCHIVES, as well as in other museums in Japan and abroad?

Igarashi　Collections in domestic museums are small. About 50 museums abroad have collections. The first opportunity came in the late 1970s when a couple from the American cosmetics company ESTEE LAUDER visited Japan and purchased posters by several designers, one of which was a poster I designed. That was the beginning of my connection with the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA). Recently, I have been receiving more and more requests from foreign museums to donate artworks.

ー　Are these works from your time as a designer or after you became a sculptor?

Igarashi　It's both, but in terms of quantity, it's overwhelmingly design works. It's posters, crafts and products, I designed furniture, I do clocks, playing cards, all kinds of areas, so there's a lot of different things in the collection. The Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Germany, has the world's largest and most impressive collection of 20th and 21st century art, architecture and design, which also houses my posters and product work.

ー　Did you encourage foreign museums to donate artworks?

Igarashi　No, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the other party contacts us. At MoMA, I created MoMA's original calendars and playing cards using axonometric drawing methods, and I worked there for about 15 years, so many of my works are in the museum's collection, including these.
As an aside, there was this episode at the time. MoMA told us, "Tell your designer friends in Japan not to send your work to us because they want it in their collections. We had to take it back through customs and that was very expensive and difficult." They said, "We are always looking at designs from all over the world and it is our job to see who is doing good work and then decide what to collect, so there is no way it will be housed here if you send it to us.

ー　I'm sure there are many people who would like to have a permanent collection at MoMA. As we are asking you, the activities of this design archive started when we realised that the lack of design museums in Japan meant that the materials of the works of those who built Japan after the war were scattered and discarded, and we wondered if we could do something about it. What do you think about the lack of design museums in Japan?

Igarashi　There are various museums around the world, such as MoMA and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, but due to high land prices in city centres, recently branch museums have started to be built in various places, including regional cities and countries that are not so keen on design museums.
In Japan, too, the bottleneck is that land prices are too high, especially in Tokyo, to build large buildings such as museums. Another difficulty with design products, unlike artworks, is that the works exhibited are sold on the market. However, in Scandinavia, the items that were in the collections of museums in the 1960s are still available in shops today, and I think this shows the difference in the way of thinking about good design.

Reasons for turning from designer to sculptor

ー　Finally, I would like to ask you one more question. You were not a time-consuming commercial advertiser, you were a man of your own thoughts, you had built a unique world that everyone envied, and you were sailing along smoothly when suddenly you made the switch to the world of art. Design and art are the same creation, but unlike design, art is not something that people ask you to create, but something that you create and express with a passion that comes from within. I know you have been asked this question by many people in the past, but I would like to ask you again why you turned from designer to sculptor.

Igarashi　One day I opened the newspaper and found an article by a professor at the University of Tokyo. He said that no matter how good a person or expert you are, there is no further future beyond what you have researched to the best of your ability. He said that that period is 20 years. In other words, it is difficult, or rather impossible, to pursue what you have figured out with all your might for about 20 years for another 20 years, so after 20 years of hard work, why not change your theme? It said that if I did that, I would see a new perspective, a new world, and I thought, I get it. And about 20 years after I started as a designer, I became a sculptor.

ー　You decided to change your point of view.

Igarashi　Yes, since I became a sculptor in 1994, I have changed the base of my activities every ten years. At first I worked in Los Angeles, and after ten years I returned to Japan in 2004 and set up my studio in Akiya, Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture. In 2011, I renovated an abandoned primary school in Shintotsukawa, Hokkaido, and built a studio and gallery named 'Kazenobi', where I began my creative activities in earnest in 2014.

Exterior view of "Kazenobi"
Photo by Machiko Kosuge

Mr. Igarashi in the making
Photo by Asako Hada

Atelier of "Kazenobi"
Photo by Koji Sakai

Gallery of "Kazenobi"
Photo by Yasuhiro Tsushima

Igarashi　Some people might think that a designer-turned-sculptor is like an old man's retirement game, but I don't make sculptures with that in mind. I have a very strong desire to enjoy life. To achieve this, I felt that art would allow me to achieve more freedom.
I don't just want to make sculptures, I want to create a world of public art. It is a world that transcends the realm, where everything is included. I always want to challenge new worlds by questioning what is taken for granted, turning things upside down, breaking them down and reconstructing them.
But that doesn't mean I have stopped working in design. At first, I still had a strong impression of the title of designe, so I tried as much as possible to avoid asking for and receiving work from people I knew from my designer days, but then, after 10 or 15 years, I started doing both art and design work, which I do now.
Comparing design and art has revealed many interesting things. For example, the beauty and function of a design work becomes more and more obsolete day by day when it is completed and handed to someone, whereas the value of fine art increases day by day. So you can make all sorts of interesting comparisons like that.
The "IGARASHI TAKENOBU Archive" at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology is planning to hold regular exhibitions of works and materials from the collection, and one of the exhibition methods is based on the theme of 'comparison'. Comparison is not about deciding whether something is good or bad, but about finding the answer to the question of what is the difference between what is placed on the right and what is placed on the left. We are not trying to do something difficult, but to create a world where we can weave together a series of such understandings that anyone can enjoy and appreciate.

ー　In terms of design and art, there used to be a gap between art and design, which was often discussed, but today, more and more people in their twenties and thirties are easily jumping over the genre barrier and creating works of art.

Igarashi　There are a lot of different movements coming up, and in a way it's interesting. But I wonder how to say it a bit more. I think it would be good if there was more ingenuity, or quality understanding, or something like that.
Recently, something like this happened: the alphabet logo I designed for Shibuya PARCO Part 3, which opened in 1981, will be permanently installed in the newly rebuilt Shibuya PARCO in 2019. In my case, I grew up in the heyday of corporate logos and CI, and I thought it was interesting that the work I created then was installed as public art in the current era. Also, recently, the SUNTORY HALL sculpture I designed was featured in an overseas photo book.

Nomiyama　There is a photographer who photographs skaters skating on various public art sculptures around the world. His photo book was to be published by a French publisher, and Mr. Igarashi was contacted to include photos of his SUNTORY HALL sculptures. For the first edition, Mr. Igarashi refused, so the pages where his work was to be laid out were published completely blank. When the second edition was printed, Mr. Igarashi was contacted again, and at that time Mr. Igarashi gave the OK, so it was published. I think that the intention of the photographic collection was to say that perhaps public art belongs to everyone by skating outdoor sculptures on skateboards, which are synonymous with street culture.

ー　In Mr. Masanori Umeda's case, there are people who draw illustrations of the chairs and products he designs and upload them to SNS, and in recent years, his younger generation of fans has been increasing overseas. They seem to respond to things that are genuinely good and interesting, regardless of genre, such as design or art. I look forward to seeing how the "IGARASHI TAKENOBU Archive" at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology will be received, studied and utilised by the young people of today and future generations. I also understand that you are currently planning two solo exhibitions. I am sure that many more works will be created in the future, and I look forward to seeing them too. Thank you very much for your time today.

Enquiry:

IGARASHI TAKENOBU Archive　https://igarashiarchive.jp
TAKEO ARCHIVES　https://www.takeoarchives.com
Tama Art University Art Archives Center　https://aac.tamabi.ac.jp
kazenobi　https://takenobuigarashi.jp/kazenobi-jp/