The annual Designart Tokyo festival showcased an extraordinary range of creative works this year, from an innovative steel tea room to a unique speaker crafted from rocket fuel tanks. The event, which ranks among Japan's largest art and design festivals, brought together emerging talent alongside established names in the creative industry.
This year's festival introduced a significant new venue with the unveiling of a 1,145-square-meter gallery space in Shibuya, central Tokyo, which housed the main Designart Tokyo exhibition. Beyond traditional gallery spaces, visitors could explore design installations in unconventional locations, including underground rooms beneath the city's extensive railway network and basement spaces in office buildings typically closed to the public.
Among the emerging talent, designer Yoshiaki Kanamori stood out with his "Jokei Scene (or Memory)" exhibition, part of a showcase featuring designers under 30 years old. Working in a maze of spaces underneath a railway line, Kanamori transformed everyday architectural elements—stairs became lamps and window grills evolved into lighting installations. His work aimed to preserve scenes of daily Japanese life while offering glimpses into the country's typical architecture through the lens of memory.
The festival's most intriguing spatial experiment came from lead designer Yuzo Kosaka and his collaborators Yushi Tanaka, Yoshiki Ichikawa, Ayaka Hagiya, and Hiromi Sato, who created SEN-AN for construction company Grandir Inc's Mitate project. Described as reconstructing traditional tea room culture, this installation featured a tea room built from light-gauge steel that was deliberately rusted in places to emphasize the passage of time. The container-like structure adhered to traditional tatami mat measurements, creating a tactile, peaceful atmosphere that contrasted beautifully with its industrial materials.
Designer Natsumi Komoto presented her striking "Kizashi From Error to Mirror" collection at the offices of Tokyo company Sync. Her sculptural furniture pieces were crafted from aluminum that she polished and melted to create diverse patterns and textures, giving the metal what she described as an "unexpectedly soft nuance." The exhibition included not only her sculptural objects but also sketches and graphic designs, demonstrating both playful creativity and expert craftsmanship skills.
One of the festival's most innovative pieces came from Nomura and Space Project, who created the Debris Rocket Tank Speaker from an actual rocket fuel tank split in two. This aluminum alloy speaker featured a cylindrical design with a triangular antenna made from grass fiber for sound amplification and a decorative sphere to help sound radiation. The omnidirectional speaker was designed so listeners cannot determine the sound's source, referencing how gravity's absence confuses directional perception in space.
The Nomadic Design collective brought a unique perspective with their "Buy Method, Keep Becoming" exhibition, showcasing work by designers Itaru Shinagawa, Takumi Fukushima, and Shohei Kasamatsu. The exhibition highlighted not only the finished pieces—including Shinagawa's slip-molded storage containers, Kasamatsu's paper lamps, and Fukushima's bench—but also their packaging materials. The cardboard used by commercial carriers was scored with grid slits, allowing reconfiguration into various shapes, and these materials became part of the exhibition itself, emphasizing the relationship between aesthetic and practical design aspects.
Designer Shinya Yamamoto rounded out the highlights with his "Primitive and Adorable" collection at the Designart Gallery in Shibuya. His playful furniture pieces included the Turn lounge chair, Clamp side table and shelf, and Trio stool, all crafted from wood and glass. The colorful designs and friendly shapes attracted significant visitor attention, featuring distinctive joinery techniques created to celebrate what Yamamoto called "an endearingly clumsy beauty."
Designart Tokyo ran from October 31 to November 9, spanning multiple venues across the city and continuing its tradition of presenting cutting-edge design in both conventional and unexpected spaces throughout Japan's capital.
