Profile

Description

Description

The lifespan of commercial buildings and shops is short: 10 years, or even 3 to 5 years for some genres. This is due to the fact that commercial spaces are designed to be profitable and their design life depends on market trends. Takashi Sugimoto has worked mainly in commercial spaces, designing and producing interiors for bars, restaurants, hotels and shops in Japan and abroad. The fact that for more than 40 years Takashi Sugimoto, or SUPER POTETO, has been a prominent figure in the rapidly changing design of commercial spaces is something that deserves special mention in the history of Japanese design.
He studied metal forging at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Tokyo University of the Arts, and as soon as he graduated from the university, he set up a design office jointly with his classmate Kunikazu Takatori (Takatori Space Planning, became independent in 1988), who had gone on to graduate school. The original name of the company was Potato Design and it was based in a jazz cafe called "Dug" in Shinjuku, a hangout for creatives. In 1973 he changed his name to SUPER POTETO and set up his own company, but the year before that he had designed the now legendary Radio bar, which he introduced to Koji Ozaki, a barman at Dug's, who had a good property and suggested that he set up his own bar. In the past, the counter bar had bottles lined up all over the place, but they wanted to create a place where people could meet, so they decided to eliminate the excess and use only a large table counter. Because of the low budget, the design fee was whisky. However, this led to Sugimoto's frequent appearances on the Radio. Sugimoto's new approach to space attracted the attention of designers and architects such as Issey Miyake, Ikko Tanaka, Yohji Yamamoto and Tadao Ando, as well as Seiji Tsutsumi, the head of the Seibu Department Store. This is an episode full of Sugimoto's personality: creating the seeds of creativity from nothing, meeting people, enjoying drinks and food, and bringing them to fruition in a dynamic space.
As a design director of Seibu Department Store and Seibu Group in its heyday, he was responsible for the design and launch of each shop, and also participated in MUJI as an advisor from conceptualization to space design. In 1998, he opened "Mezzanine" at the Grand Hyatt Singapore, which was a great success as a show kitchen, and since then he has received offers from hotels in India, China and other Asian countries.
Even after Sugimoto's death, SUPER POTETO continues to be highly regarded, especially by overseas clients. This is because, although the great maestro built a design office, the Sugimoto-ism has been inherited by the organisation itself and applied to contemporary society. This is the function of an intangible archive.

Masterpiece

Selected works

Boutique "Wise" (1972), Bar "Radio" (1972), Art Bookstore "Art Vivant" (1975), Cafe "Figaro" (1975), Parlour "Strawberry" (1975), "Maruhachi" (1978), "Radio" refurbishment (1982), "MUJI" Aoyama (1983) , "Yurakucho Seibu" (1984), "SHUNJU" Mishuku (1986), "Shibuya Seibu SEED Kan" (1986), "Narita Golf Club" (1989), " SHUNJU " Akasaka (1990), "MUJI" Aoyama 3-chome (1993), Sony Showroom "PlayStation" (1995) ,Grand Hyatt Singapore "Mezzanine" (1998), "Niki" (1999), "SHUN/KAN" (2002), "Grand Hyatt Tokyo" Wedding Chapel (2003), "Park Hyatt" Seoul (2005), "Hyatt Regency" Kyoto (2006), "SHUNJU TSUGIHAGI" (2006), "Muji" Roppongi (2007), "Coredo Muromachi" (2010), "MUJI HOTEL SHENZHEN" Shenzhen (2018)

Books

"Shunju: New Japanese Cuisine" PERIPLUS EDITIONS (2006), " Super Poteto Design", Charles E. TUTTLE Publishing (2006), "Takashi Sugimoto's Design: Conception｜Fermentation" TOTO Publishing (2010), "Muyo no Design" TOTO Publishing (2011), "A LIFE WITH MUJI" Ryohin Keikaku (2018)

Awards

Mainichi Design Award (1985, 1986), Interior Design Association (1985), Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation Award (2001), Restaurant Design of the Year (2001), Space Design Organization KU/KAN Award (2007), Interior Design Magazine Hall NY of Fame Awards (2008), Asia Hotel Award (2013)

Interview

Interview

For rough hand-drawn sketches rather than drawings
It summed up all the unspoken concepts!

What is the SUPER POTETO Archive?

ー　Since the death of Takashi Sugimoto in 2018, his wife Izumi has taken over the management of the company. Today we would like to talk to Izumi Sugimoto, the representative of the company, Shinya Maeda, the designer, and Naoki Iijima, a member of SUPER POTETO from the early days, about Mr Sugimoto and the SUPER POTETO archive. Takashi Sugimoto is a graduate of Tokyo University of the Arts, but he started his own business without belonging to any organisation. What kind of activities did you do during that time?

Izumi Sugimoto　Sugimoto has never worked anywhere before. He had studied metalworking at the University of the Arts, and soon after graduating in 1968, he and Kunikazu Takatori, who had also studied metalworking, decided to start a company together. Initially they called theirlves Potato Design and worked as a kind of design institute, but in 1973 they officially set up their own company, SUPER POTETO. Until then he was doing some part-time work. He worked on Yohji Yamamoto's first Y's shop (in Shinjuku) in 1972, when they were meeting in Shinjuku. That was when he was just starting out. He only designed this first Y's shop. Later, he created the bar Radio.

ー　Potato Design and SUPER POTETO. What was the intention behind the "potato"?

Sugimoto　 I once made a forged potato for a university project. I still have that piece of work. At that time, the Beatles were very popular. They had created a corporate entity called Apple Core, which included Apple Records and Apple Studios, and Apple had become a symbolic icon for the Beatles. If the Beatles were Apple, we were the potatoes made of wrought gold. The choice of Apple and Potato as the company name may have had a pop art nuance at the time.

ー　That's a side to you that you may not know. Mr. Sugimoto has been a leading figure in the design industry for a long time, from "Radio" and "Maruhachi" to "MUJI" and "Hyatt Hotel". He was also a founding committee member and director of TOTO Gallery, and ran the SHUNJU restaurant. What about the figures, sketches, models and other objects that form his design archive?

Sugimoto　We used to keep the drawings in the warehouse, but now we put them out at the entrance of this office. We are trying to digitise them little by little. I started to put the drawings into data because they would get damaged if they were still on paper, but it's very time-consuming and difficult, so I'm trying to put in the most important ones first, as I might not be able to keep them all. But I don't keep any of the sketches for each project. After each project, I threw them away. I have a few models, but not the old ones.

Maeda　 It is very difficult to organise and stock the archive while working, so we have not been able to do it. In the first place, the purpose of making models is for our own study and for presentation to our clients. We don't want to keep them as reference material, we are more interested in the finished product. It's more about storing images and materials. We have not given that much importance to the storage of models after the completion of a property. Since 2000, the importance of models has been reaffirmed and we try to keep as many as possible, but it is difficult to preserve them because they are subject to weathering.

ー　Did he use hand-drawn drawings?

Sugimoto　In the past, he used to draw everything by hand. Now, it looks so beautiful. The other thing he left behind are his photographs.

Maeda　We have never seen Sugimoto's hand-drawn drawings, and what we have in our archive are mainly photographs of the construction. There are some sketches, but very few of them are kept.
If it is published in a magazine, it will be a record and the text of the concept will be preserved.

ー　In the early days, we used to use positive film for our photographs. This also deteriorates, so more and more people are converting to digital.

Sugimoto　I've been asking Mr. Shirotori to take photos of SUPER POTETO for a long time, and he's told me that I should digitize them, but I haven't done that yet.

Iijima　Shiratori-san always shoots in 4×5, so if we can digitize his photos, we can preserve them beautifully.

ー　Shiro Kuramata and Shigeru Uchida designed interiors as well as products and furniture. Had he launched any of his own products?

Maeda　Since 2006, when I joined SUPER POTETO, we have designed furniture and lighting as part of our interior design, but I don't remember being asked to make just furniture or products.

Iijima　I was with the company from 1976 to 1985, and in the beginning we had to design and produce all the products needed for interiors ourselves. In the beginning, we had to design and produce the products we needed for interiors ourselves. However, at the height of the bubble economy, we were so busy that we couldn't do that anymore.

ー　MUJI shops are developed as a system, but the fixtures and furniture are original. In particular, the early MUJI furniture was an important part of the space. Did Mr Sugimoto himself measure the furniture?

Maeda　From the early days to the present, MUJI has greatly expanded its product range and shop space. During this process, furniture and fixtures have been designed in a standardized manner, but I don't remember Sugimoto himself taking detailed measurements and designing them. He would occasionally draw sketches for us, but most of the time he would give us verbal instructions.

Iijima　I think he hated that kind of work. Even during my time at the school, he had decided that he didn't need to do his own drawings; he would sharpen a 4B pencil by himself and draw a sketch, a sort of bludgeoning sketch, on a hunch. It was a sketch that gave me the impression of Giacometti. The whole concept was summed up in that. That was the basis on which we made the drawings. Unfortunately, the sketch has not survived, but if it had, it would have been valuable.

Maeda　There was a time when it was taken for granted that architects and designers designed, measured and drew their own designs, but I think that he was one of the few interior designers who have taken the initiative to play the role of director from the very beginning. It must have been very difficult for him to establish that within the company, but that's how he approached his work from the beginning.

Sugimoto　We have almost no data on radios as it was before the company was established. Mr. Iijima, there are no drawings of the Radio in 1972 left anywhere, are there?

Iijima　Yes, but I have in my possession a copy of the plans for the refurbishment of the Radio in 1982, a plan sketch drawing. I've used that as an assignment when I give lectures at university. It was hand-drawn and all the measurements were drawn on it. My memory is a bit hazy, but it looks like my handwriting (laughs), so I must have drawn it. I don't know what I was thinking, but I had a copy of it with me.

Maeda　If Mr. Iijima has the drawings in his possession, perhaps the sketches have been preserved somewhere.

Sugimoto　The '72 Radio has few elements, and the lighting is impressive, as if it were stuck near the ceiling. It is placed at the entrance of this office.

The origins of Mono-ha

ー　You start with a rough sketch and a few words, but the finished space has a unique use of materials, exactly the kind of materials you would expect from SUPER POTETO. The use of steel, large natural stones, old wood from huge trees or old bricks from demolished buildings... what is the source of these materials?

Sugimoto　I believe that the origin of Sugimoto, or SUPER POTETO, lies in his student days. The second half of the 1960s was a time of student activism and social vitality, and the arrival of Pop Art from the United States attracted a lot of attention. On the other hand, there was the "Mono-ha" school, which tried to create art from the reduction to things. Nobuo Sekine, Noriyuki Haraguchi and Koji Enokura were friends of the same generation and were a great source of inspiration. They would put oil and water in a cube to show how different substances could give different sensations to the same liquid. They showed him art that appealed to him even though there was little human involvement. I was also inspired by Mono-ha because I studied oil painting at the University of the Arts, and I guess Sugimoto was the same. In fact, he was forging metal and beating it into shape with his own hands, so he must have had a strong interest in "things" in the first place.

ー　So you have created a dynamic space, partly due to your devotion to the Mono-ha school.

Sugimoto　Perhaps that dynamic comes from his personality.

Iijima　I think the starting point is that I ended up with things because of my personality and qualities. When I started interior design, Kuramata and Uchida were close to me, so he was inevitably influenced by them in the course of competing with them, but I think he tried to block them out somehow. Whereas Kuramata-san tried to keep the smell of things away, Sugimoto-san tried to draw it in. It wasn't a conscious thing; it seemed to be something that the body did naturally.
He was a member of the kendo club at the University of the Arts, and I think that kendo cultivated in him a sense of being able to get into his body and find the right moment without thinking about it.

ー　He didn't have what we now call design thinking in practice.

Iijima　He didn't like that and didn't want to talk about it much. He read those books in secret, but he never told himself that we should build our designs with that kind of know-how.

Carrying on Sugimoto-ism

ー　SUPER POTETO has continued to work with MUJI Hyatt and others even after your death. I think it's because you've managed to keep Sugimoto-ism alive even as the times have changed.

Maeda　It's very difficult, and sometimes I wonder what Sugimoto would say if he were here. What would Sugimoto say? Things change very quickly now, and in the few years since Sugimoto was here, things have changed a lot, but I still feel that what Sugimoto tried to do from the beginning as SUPER POTETO is still one of our most important values.
It seems to me that he was always thinking in terms of opposites, and that he was designing while looking at the two poles from different places. Looking at the other side and thinking about the end point. In the same way, we should look at the new aspects of modern society, but we should also keep the value of the SUPER POTETO design. It is not only the drawings that are archived, but also all the people and designs that were involved, the words that Sugimoto said from time to time, and the sensations that he felt at the time, that are stored in the memory of our brains. It's an archive that lives on. However, we are always struggling to find a way to make something that is a bit new, but also a bit like SUPER POTETO.

ー　What is the nature of SUPER POTETO for you?

Maeda　Sugimoto himself never told us much about his designs, and he didn't really want to talk about his work publicly. There are so many people from SUPER POTETO, and I think that each of them has their own "character", but one of the things I feel is that they designed the other side of the material, the history, the culture, the smell, the air. Even if a material is used for a long time, it is because he designed the history, the background, the smell and the time period that he made it into such a shape, which is different from the traditional design method. He also paid attention to detail, and intentionally created a sense of discomfort. I think we have been thinking about what is essentially important for people.
However, it is difficult to define "uniqueness" in a few words. What I can say for sure is that we are different.

ー　When you make a decision, do you think "this is what Sugimoto-san would say", or is that a major criterion for you?

Maeda　That's part of it, and I'm sure they'll say, "You can't keep talking like that. There are times when I am troubled and my time is up.

Deliberate embellishment of modernism

Iijima　SUPER POTETO has been active for more than 40 years, but it has changed from one decade to the next: the first decade, the next decade... and so on. In the latter part of the decade, the work was mainly done abroad and the conditions and content were different. I was there for the first ten years, and at that time it was, so to speak, "how to shake off the spell of Kuramata". That's what every designer in Japan was thinking. Even those who said they weren't influenced by Kuramata were somehow affected by him. Mr. Sugimoto must have wanted to express that he was different from Mr. Kuramata. The Radio has a sharp design, and at first glance it falls into the same category as Kuramata's, but it contains elements that Kuramata did not. It's modernism, but he deliberately puts a decorative sense into it. He was trying to hint at the superficiality of decoration. He was doing a collage of it, and I thought that was also a kind of escape from Kuramata's grudge.

ー　The lighting in the radio is definitely Art Deco. Later, at Maruhachi in Shibuya, we showed the walls and ceiling as a skeleton.

Iijima　Maruhachi is now used as a live music venue and the wooden counter in the foreground is still there. At that time, there was no such thing as a skeleton finish, and there was no interior design in the world that was not finished as it was at the construction site, so it was a real epoch-making moment. After that, skeleton shops started to appear everywhere. Sugimoto-san's approach is that of an installation. He creates a space of presence by means of a constructional framework. You could call it a space of pause. In Maruhachi, louvers made of iron pipes are placed on the wall like a folding screen, and the seats are placed as if they are wrapped around it. It is a space like a battlefield in the Genpei era, where warriors set up a bonfire and take up their positions.

ー　Maruhachi is from the 70's. In the 80's you renovated Radio, but in the 80's the economy was booming and you worked on a lot of shops for the Seibu Group and others.

Iijima　The art bookstore Art Vivant in 1975, the cafe Figaro, shopping centres all over the country... It's amazing that they were created by a newly independent designer, who was told to be adventurous. We will never have such a miraculous time again. I was involved in many projects, including the Seibu shops.
He also worked on many other fashion boutiques such as PASHU and JUN. Seibu's involvement peaked in the mid-80s and lasted until about 1990, but an extension of your work with Seibu is MUJI, which continues to this day. In later years, the Seibu element gradually faded away and we started to work on more large-scale projects. We also worked with Dentsu and Suntory.

Maeda　The late 90's to 2000 was a period of transition from hand-drawing to computers, which made it easier to understand and preserve the drawings as a record. However, the characteristic of the SUPER POTETO is that there are some expressions that are not at all obvious from the drawings. It's not a design that is a combination of industrial products, but rather an expression of steel on this surface that can only be understood by being there, and I think that was more important.

Iijima　CAD drawings are all about lines, so there is no hierarchy between elements.

ー　Then it's more and more important to see how it's received in the field.

Maeda　The field is important and difficult.

Iijima　There were times when everything had to be redone.

Maeda　In the days of ample capital up to the 1980s, if Sugimoto said, "Let's do it over," it was possible to do it over. We managed to get Sugimoto's approval in meetings, but there were times when he would say "I never said that" at the site. All that was left on the drawing was the dimensions, finishes and spatial arrangement. The most important thing is the atmosphere on the site, and I think this is what makes us different from other firms. It was very intense.

ー　Did Mr. Sugimoto have his own suppliers of materials and construction, like Mr. Kuramata had with Ishimaru?

Iijima　In the early days, the work was carried out by junior students from the University of the Arts who had studied metalworking.

Maeda　For the stones, we commissioned Mr. Masatoshi Izumi from Kagawa, who is known for his work with Isamu Noguchi. But there were countless suppliers, including a small ironworks in Saitama, so it wasn't a case of leaving it to just anyone.

ー　In 1986 he opened his own business, SHUNJU, in Mishuku. Looking back on his work, he seem to have worked in a lot of restaurants, was this a result of his passion for food?

Sugimoto　 It's true that he love food and drink, and he have worked in many restaurants. He have been immersed in izakaya since he was a student, and he knew many different kinds of izakaya. He was often told that what he studied at that time must have been applied to his design and to the production of SHUNJU.

Hyatt Hotels and MUJI

Iijima　In 1998, I was responsible for the renovation of the Grand Hyatt Singapore, designing a restaurant called Mezzanine. It was a pioneer of the luxury food court and a very commercially successful project. He created a design that was unthinkable for hotel food and beverage up to that point: a 500sqm space in a luxury hotel full of food stalls with the same design. It's luxury, but in terms of the phenomenon, it's the same as the way people are fed in the messy food stalls found on the streets of Taiwan and Hong Kong. Everyone eats together, which is also based on the experience of drinking in Shinjuku, which I think he lived. Originally, he didn't like the style of French cuisine where a plate is carried to each person, and he was interested in common people getting together and eating in a lively way. That was surprisingly comfortable for Europeans, so they accepted it.

ー　Do you find it easy to get clients to agree to such new proposals?

Maeda　There is a lot of debate about what not to do, what not to do. As a rule, designers work to satisfy the client, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are directly involved in creating a good space.
We had already joined the company as famous SUPER POTETO, so I think we were all half conscious of the fact that we were creating a work of art. Because we are Sugimoto, we create this kind of space. In order to achieve this, the designer in the middle has to come to terms with the gap between the client's image and the design. I felt that Sugimoto was very good at getting to that point.

Sugimoto　Before Singapore, he was partly in charge of Hyatt Hotels at the Grand Hyatt Fukuoka in 1996, and that was our connection. After the success of Mezzanine, he started to work more for overseas hotel groups such as Shangri-La Group and MGM Group in addition to Hyatt Group. Because of the success stories, they seem to let him do as much as he want.

ー　Now he had established his style at the Hyatt, a luxury hotel. What about MUJI?

Maeda　He was involved with MUJI from the very beginning, from the creation of the brand, so he think it was Sugimoto's life's work.

MUJI HOTEL SHENZHEN, Shenzhen (2018)

Iijima　The work of the Seibu Department Store cannot be described without mentioning Ikko Tanaka. Mr Tanaka was very fond of Mr Sugimoto. And at the centre of it all was Seiji Tsutsumi, a man of absolute magnetism. People sometimes ask why he chose Sugimoto instead of his contemporaries Kuramata and Uchida, but Tsutsumi was a man who had a say in design, and Kuramata and he did not get along. I heard that Mr. Uchida deliberately used the grid, an icon of modernism, in his design, and that Mr. Tsutsumi denied it, so they rebelled against each other.
As a result, Kazumitsu Tanaka and Kazuko Koike discussed the concept of combining "Muji" and "Ryohin" together. MUJI is a no-name brand. It's a deep antipathy to the fashion of brands, it's a challenge to the other side of capitalism. What he carries on his back is modernism, but are there any other values that are not exclusively modernist? The hint was to gather them together and bricolage them. This is where alternatives are born. That feeling and the concept of MUJIwere connected at the root and in a deep way. That's why, up to now, the MUJI way of thinking has remained unchanged and has been passed on.

ー　Perhaps Mr. Sugimoto was able to see the times we live in.

Iijima　But it doesn't look like he was pursuing it theoretically. It was more like a strong intuition that kept him abreast of the times. The Maruhachi table, for example, doesn't fall into the category of conventional furniture - it's a 4B pencil drawing, and we make a table out of it. We had to find the wood. It's red pine. The less you design it, the better, he said. The less I design the better, he said. He wanted to present itself and erase everything else. He doesn't want it to look like a piece of furniture, he's a design 'Mono-ha', so to speak.

Maeda　He was an advisory member of MUJI from the very beginning, and I think hewas like one of the nurturing parents for MUJI's growth as a company. He participated in debriefing sessions for product development that was not space-related as well as space-related. He would point out to the young employees, "What is so MUJI about this? They were all very nervous, as they were most afraid of being told so.
The reason why MUJI became the talk of the world from the first shop in Aoyama is probably because the concept of the products and the concept of the space went hand in hand, and the shop was very convincing. The cracked shiitake mushroom, which had never been a product before, and the space using scrap wood were a perfect match. Although the original design has disappeared, MUJI's shop design hasn't changed that much. That's exactly what the people in charge at that time decided at a meeting, like a family tradition, and it has been handed down from generation to generation.

Sugimoto　MUJI in Sangenjaya is still there as it was then.

Maeda　Sugimoto liked the idea of a lively place for communication, but I think he thought that people should be the main actors of the space. But he is a person who doesn't say much, and even when we have a meeting, he says things like "it's totally different", but he doesn't say "it's good". If he didn't say anything, it means you can go ahead. And he makes decisions very, very quickly. We only need Sugimoto's sketch to show that there is something here, because we can think of the dimensions and so on. That's how it all fits together.

ー　So from the start he knew what he was getting into.

Maeda　I think that was the point of view, but it is changing rapidly. Each time, he did it with great speed. I thought he had great intuition.

ー　How did you develop your intuition?

Sugimoto　I don't know exactly what it was, but he read a lot. And he travelled a lot. In terms of his quickness of judgment, towards the end of a project he would often go and see the site. At the Royal Golf Club in '17, one of his last projects, Sugimoto would tell us to lower the height of the lights by 3cm, or to put a tree here. It's a very small difference, but it's a very clear instruction.

ー　From what you have said so far, it is clear that the essence of Mr Sugimoto's work lies not in what remains as drawings or words, but in what is difficult to preserve as archives, such as the texture and atmosphere of the time, and that this is why it is important to have an unstructured archive that can be passed from person to person.

Iijima　Drawings are not important. It's just a symbol. There is nothing important in them.

Maeda　Perhaps that's why, at the time, he didn't seem to be aware of storage at all.

Sugimoto　I think he thought that the best way to do this was to create a new project every time.

ー　On the other hand, Mr. Sugimoto has always been the one who only gives rough instructions in the form of illustrations and words, and leaves the rest to the staff. It is called the Sugimoto School, and it has produced many designers and architects, including Mr. Iijima, Yukio Hashimoto, Ichiro Sato, Tsutomu Kurokawa and Noriyoshi Muramatsu. I think that this method of posing a mystery and leaving the rest to others has nurtured people. Perhaps that was the know-how that enabled the invisible archive of SUPER POTETO to be formed. Thank you very much for your time today.

Enquiry:

SUPER POTETO　https://superpotato.jp/ja/profile/