The Miyota Design Weekend’s (MDWE) inaugural launch aimed at pairing beautiful countryside with exciting new design, with a showcase set at the foot of the magnificent Mt. Asama in Nagano prefecture, Japan.
The brainchild of a group of local creatives, who have moved to the small community in search of a slower more connected lifestyle, MDWE invited designers to showcase their work at a handful of different locations around the city with the Haluta Blå, a small hotel in the process of being renovated, serving as the main exhibition hub.
Miyota Design Weekend 2023
Furniture from MAS by Karimoku, the delicate series of Hinoki furniture designed by local Miyota residence Wataru Kumano and simple DIY-ish stools and benches from Ishinomaki Laboratory together with skillfully crafted lamps by New Light Pottery represented the more established brands at Haluta Blå.
Bou Bou by Dai Ukawa
Bou Bou by Dai Ukawa
Invited to the design weekend by MDWE supporter and charismatic buyer Yu Yamada, several lesser known designers and creators delighted with works from traditionally made washi paper objects to 3D printed radios. Our three favourites? Dai Ukawa’s monotone wooden vessels, playfully named Bou Bou from the Japanese word for rod - bou - seems to defy physics as none of the 30mm pieces of rods that make up the sculptures meet at any one point. Ukawa not only designs these alluring objects, but also manufactures them.
While Gen Taniguchi’s family has been making traditional Japanese washi paper for more than 300 years, as the 12th generation head of the family business, Taniguchi’s tomeishi are not afraid of mixing traditions with electrical wiring, plastic tubes or LAN cables. Tomeishi are normally made by wrapping a piece of string such that the string stands up in the air around a rock and are used in Japanese gardens as sophisticated traffic cones as the name - stopping stone - literally implies. Taniguchi uses washi paper for the “stones” and colourful wires, ropes and tubes for the string.
3D printed objects by Shinkogeisha
Shinkogeisha, a design collective from Kyoto, brought a 3D printer, producing some of their delightful 3D printed objects over the weekend. Rather than try and smoothen out the irregularities usually resulting from printing an object, they embrace the almost knitted quality of the print in a series of objects such as a simple pen, desk clock, portable radio and various shapes and sizes of vessels. Their sculptural tape dispensers are made by meticulously 3D scanning natural rocks, and then printing a tape holder and cutter to the exact contours of the particular stone, rendering every dispenser unique.
The combination of innovative design and countryside worked wonderfully as a weekend getaway, but the event also seemed to be a big hit among locals who perhaps are not usually exposed to this kind of creativity in their own backyards. Here's hoping the Miyota Design Weekend will be back next year for more.
-
This David Lynch auction offers a rare glimpse into the late filmmaker's lifeFrom movie memorabilia to everyday items, the sale – taking place in Los Angeles 18 June – is one not to miss
-
Inside Loewe’s high-shine pop-up at Harrods, marking 10 colourful years of the Puzzle bagLoewe’s best-known handbag celebrates turning ten with a jewel box-like pop-up and eclectic array of reissues at London’s Harrods (plus, a spotted Loewe coffee van)
-
Lucifer Lighting's fixtures are designed to ‘define and disappear’‘The best lighting is the kind that no one notices,’ says Gilbert Mathews, founder of the Texas-based lighting company. Here, he speaks to Wallpaper* on its latest fixture Stellaris after its debut at Milan Design Week
-
2025 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize winner announced as Kunimasa AokiThe Japanese sculptor describes his work as ‘50 per cent tradition and 50 per cent innovation’
-
Inside the world of Tapio Wirkkala, the designer who created masterpieces in remotest LaplandThe Finnish artist set up shop in an Arctic outpost without electricity or running water; the work that he created there is now on display at a retrospective in Japan
-
Naoto Fukasawa sparks children’s imaginations with play sculpturesThe Japanese designer creates an intuitive series of bold play sculptures, designed to spark children’s desire to play without thinking
-
Time, beauty, history – all are written into trees in Karimoku Research Center's debut Tokyo exhibitionThe layered world of forests – and their evolving relationship with humans – is excavated and reimagined in 'The Age of Wood', a Tokyo exhibition at Karimoku Research Center
-
Minimal curves and skilled lines are the focal point of Kengo Kuma's Christmas treesKengo Kuma unveiled his two Christmas trees, each carefully designed to harmonise with their settings in two hotels he also designed: The Tokyo Edition, Toranomon and The Tokyo Edition, Ginza
-
Claesson Koivisto Rune on 30 years of their often Japan-inspired designs, charted in a new book‘Claesson Koivisto Rune: In Transit’ is a ‘round-the-world journey’ into the Swedish studio's projects. Here, the founders tell Wallpaper* about their fascination with Japan, and the concept of aimai
-
Teruhiro Yanagihara's new textile for Kvadrat boasts a rhythmic design reimagining Japanese handsewing techniques‘Ame’ designed by Teruhiro Yanagihara for Danish brand Kvadrat is its first ‘textile-to-textile’ product, made entirely of polyester recycled from fabric waste. The Japanese designer tells us more
-
Craft x Tech elevates Japanese craftsmanship with progressive technologyThe inaugural edition of Craft x Tech was presented in Tokyo this week, before making its first international stop at Design Miami Basel (11-16 June 2024)
