Naoto Fukasawa
Naoto Fukasawa: Japanese Industrial Designer (born 1956), Japan. Naoto Fukasawa is one of the best-known Japanese product designers working today. Fukasawa's design philosophy relies on carefully observing what people do and feel in their everyday lives in order to find simple solutions that touch the senses and link to shared memories. Naoto Fukasawas's life and work are indelibly linked to his thoughts about how people live, and how they can live better. Stardust considers his style as "functional minimalism"; a way of design that could be compared to the legendary design philosophy of German product designer Dieter Rams. What Tadao Ando is to architecture, Naoto Fukasawa is to design! Naoto Fukasawa studied art and 3D-design at Tama Art University in Tokyo. He worked as a designer for Seiko-Epson until 1988 and for ID-two in San Francisco from 1989-96. After returning to Japan in 1996, he was head of the firm IDEO's Tokyo office. In 2003 he opened his own office, Naoto Fukasawa Design, in Tokyo. Since 2001, when he also became a consultant for the MUJI company, his primary focus has been the design of household products and electronic devices. In 2003 he created the brand "plusminuszero" (±0) for minimalistic everyday household objects. While collaborating with representative brands in Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland, Scandinavia and Asian countries for their product developments, he is also consulting both national and international companies. He has continued to hold workshops based upon his own thoughts regarding the transposition of human unconsciousness into design – a philosophy that could be best expressed using the terms “Without Thought” and in 2010, it will record its 11th workshop. Fukasawa has won many awards that includs the American IDEA Gold Award, the German if Gold Award, the British D&AD Gold Award, the Mainichi Design Award, the 5th Oribe Award and a gold award for Japanese Good Design Award. In 2006, Fukasawa founded Super Normal with Jasper Morrison. In 2007, Fukasawa was accorded the title of Honorable Royal Designer for Industry (Royal Society of Arts). Fukasawa is one of the directors of 21_21 Design Sight. In 2010 Fukasawa acted as the chairman for the Good Design Award 2010 judging committee. He is a professor at Musashino Art University, a visiting professor at Tama Art University. Naoto Fukasawa has co-authored such books as The Ecological Approach to Design (Tokyo Shoseki), Optimum (Rikuyosha), while authored An Outline of Design (TOTO Shuppan) and released NAOTO FUKASAWA, a compilation of his works, through Phaidon Press. Recently Fukasawa had an exhibition in collaboration with a photographer: Tamotsu Fujii and they published The Outline – The Unseen Outline of Things (Hachette Fujingaho) |
