PROFILE

Description

Description

Motomi Kawakami, who has designed Household goods, furniture and spaces that shape the environment around us, from the design of bottles to bridges, says on the website of the Department of Environmental Design at Tama Art University, where he was a visiting professor until last year. "In the field, design requires the ability to select and integrate a wide range of new and old technologies and materials as methods, as well as social and cultural factors such as the problems of resources, the deterioration of the living environment, the ageing of society, or the North-South problem, while looking at the various scenes of the relationship between space, people and tools". In the catalogue for the "Motomi Kawakami Chronicle" exhibition held in 2011, he wrote: "In my design work, I trust in the deepening of aesthetic sense and common sense that comes from repeated experience as a consumer and aim to create designs that embody a truly rich and comfortable life in a natural way". Kawakami's first steps as a designer were taken in Italy, a country with a great lifestyle, and at the heart of his design is a strong will to "realize a rich and comfortable life". The ARFLEX JAPAN "NT", which made Kawakami's name famous and is considered one of his masterpieces, continues to be the dining room chair of affluent homes. The "BRONX" chair, still used in many seminars and symposiums, is one of Cassina ixc.'s most sought-after masterpieces for its design, comfort and high functionality, including stackability. Uchida Yoko's "Pulse" office chair is another popular product. The "Tsurumi Tsubasa Bridge", built in 1994 to connect Haneda Airport with the Yokohama Bay Bridge on the high-speed bay shore line, is highly regarded for its "harmonious and beautiful design in the chaotic environment" of the Keihin industrial area. Kawakami continues to design products and environments that enrich society and life without being influenced by trends.

Masterpiece

Masterpiece

Products

"FIORENZA" (1968), "NT"(1976), "BLITZ" *Name changed to "TUNE" (1981), "CCC" (1985), "Blendy" (1986) , "BRONX1010" (1992), "ARITA HOUEN D hand A" (2005), "StepStep" (2008), "Pulse"(2009), "HINOKI SUITE O-Bath" (2010), "KISARAGI" (2014), etc.

Interior and exterior

Niki Club Nasu Lounge (1986), Tsurumi Tsubasa Bridge (1994), Numazu Club (2008), etc.

Books

"GACHI Motomi Kawakami's Furniture", Rikuyo-sha (1986)
"MOTOMI KAWAKAMI Design with Precision and Flexibility", Amus Arts Press (2002), etc.

Interview

Interview

Design cannot convey its essence unless there is a real object or space

The design archive for Mr. Kawakami

―　What kind of image do you have when you hear the word "design museum"?

Kawakami　The Yanagi Sori Design Memorial was established in Kanazawa last year as an affiliated institution of the Kanazawa College of Art, but what about the archives of pioneers such as Mr. Riki Watanabe and Mr. Yoshio Akioka? In Asahikawa, Hokkaido, there is a chair collector and researcher named Mr. Noritsugu Oda. There is an organisation called the Oda Collection Organization（http://odacolle.org/）, and they are organising workshops, exhibitions and publishing books based on their collection of chairs, which is very valuable in the world. There are about 2000 chairs from all over the world, mainly Scandinavian furniture and household utensils. For many years there have been plans to set up an Oda museum in Asahikawa, where the collection is located, but it has been difficult to make progress because of the artist's deep desire to create a living museum, but now it is finally underway in the neighbouring town of Higashikawa.

―　Asahikawa is famous for its furniture production, and more recently for the Asahiyama Zoo.

Kawakami　Yes, the zoo, that's right. But originally Asahikawa was known as one of the leading furniture production areas in Japan, making use of the rich forest resources of Hokkaido. If the Oda Collection can be put together in the form of a museum, I think it will attract visitors from all over the world as well as the furniture and craft movement in the region.

―　 I would like to ask you about the current state of your own design materials, what do you do with your drawings and idea sketches? I heard that you make full size drawings of your furniture......

Kawakami　Yes, I keep my drawings in my office, unorganised. But these days, I usually make drawings by computer.

―　Do you have any kind of mock-up or study model?

Kawakami　It depends on the product, but in the case of a chair, I have very few models made for study purposes, because I have to go from the drawing to the actual prototype immediately, to see if it is right or wrong. Also, the mock-ups are made by the factory rather than by me, so they are disposed of after the project is finished. In fact, it's not always the case that the product is stored properly. Some manufacturers have started to keep their products in museums, but there are hardly any left.

―　Didn't you ever think of renting a warehouse and storing your own products?

Kawakami　I thought about it for a while, but then I gave up because there was no end to it. I have given many of them away to friends and acquaintances. However, the prototypes are not so important for me, because they are just an intermediate form, and some of them have been stepped up as products.

―　So the only things that have survived to some extent are the drawings?

Kawakami　There are also photographs.

―　You mean things that don't take up a lot of space?

Kawakami　In the case of products, especially furniture, it is quite difficult to keep them because they take up a lot of space. I think that one way to archive them is to put them together as a collection of works. I have published two books of my work, one by Ms. Keiko Kubota for Rikuyo-sha in 1988 called "GACHI Motomi Kawakami's Furniture" and the other by Motomi Kawakami in 2002 called "MOTOMI KAWAKAMI Design with Precision and Flexibility", was published in 2002 by Amus Arts Press, a publishing company in Osaka, but it has already disappeared and I don't know where the data for printing has gone because it was printed in analogue.

―　It's such a waste.

Kawakami　In a way, yes. So now I am making a small booklet by myself about the works after 2000, but only the photographs. There are also catalogues of individual products made by each manufacturer.

―　I think your design is one of the most important footprints of post-war Japanese design, do you want to preserve it in some way?

Kawakami　Yes, but as my wife says, "No matter how hard you try, design will always disappear naturally..... ". In fact, I think that's what design work, especially industrial and product work, is all about. The point is that we are making everyday objects, and they change rapidly with the progress of technology and the changes in our lives. Some things survive, but most things disappear with time...... I think that's the nature of it. In the end, it is not a work of art. But even though I'm a bit cold-hearted about it, I also want to leave a bit of a mark. I have recently donated some of my work to the museum of my alma mater, Tokyo University of the Arts, who have offered to house it in their collection. I only gave them a couple of projects, along with sketches and models from the competition. It's a little bit, but I think it's good.

―　The Tokyo University of the Arts has a wonderful museum and holds a lot of exhibitions.

Kawakami　Yes, but they have paintings and sculptures in their collection, but not design. So it seems to have finally started recently. Is it the times? In that sense, Musashino Art University also has a collection of chairs, posters and toys. Some of my works are also in their collection. Other museums such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, Toyama also have collections of my work.

―　What about sketching ideas?

Kawakami　I don't really keep a sketchbook, but rather I draw ideas on old letter paper or scraps of paper I find around the office. However, I don't keep all of them, some of them I keep from time to time, but many of them I throw away.

―　The reason for this is that a lot of design work these days is computerised, so it's hard to keep the designer's freehand sketches and thumbnails. However, in terms of tracing the creative process and the designer's footsteps, I think that handwritten drawings are very valuable later on.

Kawakami　We're in a period where freehand and computers are on the edge. But it's true that a sketch can convey a message by itself. The approach to thinking, the concept of the design, the background and personality of the person can be conveyed through sketches more than words and letters. On the other hand, I haven't been able to keep such things carefully.

―　You also design bridges, but did you ever think of doing architecture or urban design?

Kawakami　I have designed private houses before. I was bothered by the fact that the quality of a house depends on the client and the human relationship is too intimate. When it comes to the design of objects such as furniture, I am able to consider the relationship with the environment, checking the form and function at the same time. However, rather than thinking about enclosed spaces themselves, I am interested in more socially conscious design, where objects are diffusely connected to the environment, and I would like to be involved in public exterior design.

―　But since you mostly design furniture, you must also be interested in housing and office design.

Kawakami　What I noticed when I looked at the collection of architectural works of Mr. Koh Kitayama before was that I really felt the change of the times when I saw the exhibition and housing designs of the Biennale di Venezia, of which he was a commissioner in 2010. Wooden materials are making a comeback and the style of living is becoming more diverse. I guess you could call it a cooperative house or a shared house. These houses have private rooms, but the living room and dining room are shared, and living and living spaces are emerging where the ground floor level is open space and open to the community. These changes in the family and living unit have naturally led to changes in the way architecture is designed. As an environment, a new urban landscape is being created, and I am interested in this situation. The design of furniture and everyday objects is also changing.

―　People's lives are changing, but the way they work and the way they work in the office are also changing, aren't they?

Kawakami　It is true that the way offices are designed is also changing. It is necessary to understand the relationship and changes between the way people work and the spatial design of cities, architecture and offices. In short, we need to understand the needs of the world in each era.

―　It is important not only to understand, but also to look ahead.

Kawakami　The furniture I design is a product, a consumer product for the manufacturer, so there is a difference between the conceptual, unique pieces that express the edge of the times, such as Mr. Shiro Kuramata's work, and the everyday objects that I make. The width of such a design can vary according to the culture of the country, the time period and the living environment. People say that design work is about solving problems, but I think it's important to have foresight about what the problems are, and how to morph and materialise them.

The idea of a private museum

―　I heard that your office was created to verify full-scale drawings and mock-ups.

Kawakami　Yes, I wanted something with a lot of space above eye level, so I created a space with a floor height of 6 metres. I put up full size detail drawings on the wall and real size prototypes in the room to verify. For contract furniture in particular, I need to place it in a somewhat larger space to be able to judge it from the drawings alone. There was a time when I thought it was bigger or smaller than I thought it would be, or that it would help me to get a feel for scale.

―　This office is really nice. It has a small courtyard and outside light. Was this designed by you?

Kawakami　I designed it together with Mr. Akira Watanabe, an architect. I used to collaborate with him on various projects. This is made by the menthory method, which was very popular in the 90s. In essence, the formwork blocks are piled up, the reinforcement is placed and concrete is poured, but here the blocks are piled up in two layers, with three layers in the basement area to provide an air layer, and the surface of the blocks is left rough and polished. So this was a lot of work for the craftsmen, because they had to load it more neatly than usual. We also had to join them to remove the "noro" (concrete sludge leakage) from the surface, which was very difficult.

―　You could turn this place into a Kawakami Design Museum.

Kawakami　There are many private museums here and there, but in reality, many of them are struggling to maintain their operations. Even museums of famous painters and sculptors display only their works, and they don't hold special exhibitions, so they don't get many repeat visitors, which makes it difficult to manage. Even if you want to build a restaurant or a café or a museum shop, it's very difficult to do so. Even if you make it a foundation, if the funds don't last, it's difficult to run.

―　Are there any plans for the staff to take over?

Kawakami　In the end, I personally receive some of the requests for work, so I don't think it would be right for me to take over the work. In terms of a museum, though, if there is some royalty left, I don't mind if people use it. If it's an organised company, you have a lot of staff and you have a duty to keep the organisation properly connected, but my approach is not to grow in size.

―　It's true that the museum needs to be organised in terms of its management. But on the other hand, I think that it is because of the condensed work of individuals like you that it is easier to preserve it as a museum. There are a number of design organisations in Japan, such as the Japan Industrial Design Association (JIDA), but I haven't heard of any activities related to archiving.

Kawakami　There is no movement to do something about the design archive, but JIDA has a design museum in Shinshu, Nagano prefecture. They leave a number of products selected for each year. Most of them are mechanical products. In the future, it would be good if various design genres could be gathered together, archived and workshops could be held on a regular basis. But the hurdle is even higher for industrial design, because it should not be preserved in a static state, but in a dynamic state.

―　By dynamic preservation, you mean that it actually works. When you turn on the switch, the TV will come on, or when you turn on the engine, it will actually run.

Kawakami　If that's not the case, the meaning of an industrial design archive is diminished. If it's just a collection of shapes, then it becomes just a history museum. The Smithsonian Museum in the U.S. has a dynamic preservation system. But the real problem is that it is very difficult for an individual or a corporation to maintain and run a museum, even if it is funded by the government. There used to be an idea of a museum by eight design organizations.

―　There are 8 design organizations?

Kawakami　Industrial design, graphic design, interior design, jewellery, and so on. I was also surprised that there were eight organizations. Like the government, it is too vertically divided. It would be better if there were more horizontal connections. But the idea of a design museum has come up several times in the past, and each time it hasn't worked out. In fact, when you build a box, think about running it and estimate the costs, it doesn't go very well because you don't have the financial resources to do so, and the discussion doesn't come together as one, like collecting things is probably more important than building a vessel.

―　Instead of putting them all together in one big container, there are many small museums like the Motomi Kawakami Museum and the Shiro Kuramata Museum, and they are linked to each other and put together on one map, and visitors can pick it up and enjoy the museum and the city at the same time. I think there should be a system or a way to do that. The Biennale di Venezia, for example, has two main venues, but the aristocratic palaces and mansions throughout Venice, as well as galleries in the city, are open to the public as venues for the Biennale. Visitors look at the map and go around them, but at the same time they are supposed to stroll through the city of Venice.

Kawakami　It is true that even if each museum is small, if each museum has attractive works and valuable materials, I think it is possible. Nowadays, there are digital museums that make full use of IT, but the essence of design cannot be conveyed unless there are actual objects and spaces. It's better to be able to sit on a chair and touch it. A digital museum is important, but it is only information. Unfortunately, in our country, we don't have the patronage and culture to support such a movement.

Transformation of the design archive

―　Do you have many photos and slides of your work?

Kawakami　I have both. I'm also working on digitizing them, but it would take a huge budget to do it all, so I just do it as needed. But it seems that even digital technology is not perfect because of image degradation, so it's a tricky time.

―　Do you keep any of your prototypes?

Kawakami　That's as far as I can fit in my office. There are so many that I have to throw away the ones I don't need. But I do keep some things like furniture parts and mechanism parts. That's because it doesn't take up much space and it's the most interesting part of the design.

―　What about the magazines in which your work has been published?

Kawakami　I don't keep them as scrapbooks, but I keep the original magazines and books with Post-it in them.

―　I hope that in the future, design students will be able to see your sketches, the mock-ups on which your ideas were based, and the full-size drawings, and study them, and develop them into exhibition projects.

Kawakami　Yes, I think it would be better than having them all taken to a second-hand shop (laughs).

―　What do you think about the replacement of design by computers?

Kawakami　For me, the good thing about sticking to analogue, actual size, is that I can always feel the scale, or rather the reality, as I work. On the other hand, there are many good things about being computerised. I can go from drawing to production on demand, and computers are very useful as a management tool in such cases, whereas in the past we had to stay up all night to work on a revision. In the furniture industry, there is a word called "work in progress", which means that you have to take a shape from a square piece of wood, make mortise and tenon holes, and then put the pieces together in order once they are in stock. With the computer and the multi-axis CNC, you can do it all at once. The computer even thinks of conversion of timber.

―　Conversion of timber?

Kawakami　Because wood is a natural material, there are many things that cannot be done without knowing the nature of the wood, such as the nature of the grain, whether it is quarter-sawn or board-sawn, and whether it will or will not break. However, with the use of computers, it is possible to read the drawing and automate the process up to three dimensions. It's very easy for a computer to do things that used to be done by people. In order to create such software, it is essential to have people who know the properties of wood and the manufacturing process, and there is also a fear that traditional handicrafts will fall into disuse.

―　The design field has changed so much that the design museum has to change too, hasn't it?

Kawakami　That's right.

―　By the way, you studied design under Mr. Angelo Mangiarotti in Milan, do you know how the design archive is treated in Italy?

Kawakami　I do not know how they handle archives. After Mangiarotti's passing away four years ago, his daughter took over the firm while working as a professor of architecture at Politecnico di Milano. Just as she had almost finished archiving and was looking to turn the office into a trust, she passed away just a few days afterwards. The office appears to be in disarray after the sudden passing of the office's chief of staff. At present, a Japanese woman who has been on the staff for over 20 years continues to work for the Trust.

―　There are many masters in Italy, aren't there? I heard that Mr. Ettore Sottsass' archive was given to the Centre Pompidou by his wife.

Kawakami　I also heard that the office of Achille Castiglioni is closing.

―　Mr. Castiglioni is a master, isn't he? What will happen to his archive?

Kawakami　It's a global problem. But there are some solid European manufacturers who have their own museums. The Vitra Design Museum, for example, is very large and has a lot of content. In Japan, the furniture industry is very small, and there are some big steel furniture manufacturers, but they don't have the time to build a museum. Although it's not a design museum, the Toyama Prefectural Museum of Art and Design, which is designed by Mr. Hiroshi Naito and has Mr. Toshiki Kiriyama as its deputy director, has been organising worldwide graphic design competitions in the form of triennials for many years, and has a collection of posters and furniture. You might like to ask them about their future plans.

―　There are some public museums like the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto and the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama that are relatively focused on design and architecture.

Kawakami　But there is a momentum all over Japan to review the ethnic and climatic context, the local history and culture, so it would be good if we can find some sensible way of preserving design museums and design archives in the future.

Enquiry:

Kawakami Design Room

http://www.motomi-kawakami.jp/contact.html