THE INTERNATIONAL FACE OF JAPANESE DESIGN
Naoto Fukasawa is considered the most prominent, internationally active Japanese designer, and he is the chairman of Good Design Award.
Graduated from Tama Art Product. Representative of Naoto Fukasawa Design. He engaged in a number of designs of the leading manufacturers in Japan, and other major brands of Nordic and Europe.
What is most important design or technology?
Technology – it used to be design, but now it is technology.
It has happened naturally, it is nobody’s responsibility, they used to be separated, now they are melted and combined. Still we need to create a relationship between the object and the human being, work on the interaction, this is kind of the main challenge nowadays.
Which was your favourite design this year?
(Laughs)…I don’t like this question (Everybody laughs) Sorry, I shouldn’t be saying that.
Which was the other judging criteria a part from comfort?
I think we worked the other way around, we viewed all the design entries that fulfilled our criteria and the final screen regarded the sense and quality of comfort.
Sense of comfort in Japanese has slightly another meaning. ‘Kokochi’ is not just a physical thing, it is something psychological you need to work to create, it regards the quality of the interaction with the object.
Is there a product that you wish you had seen, that you did not?
I think this answer is quite vague to your question. However…In the past many entries that were made were more… ‘design-like’, in the past they were embellishing the product. I am not seeing many embellished design today.
Korea and Japan have a very similar design history, how do you think Korean design should be developed?
Korea has been growing very rapidly, some people say that Japan is in decline, the truth is that the things we are approaching are not very visible, we are working for the basic, fundamental infrastructures for our life. Our progress is less visible now but we stll have a very powerful technology, as you can see in this year entries.
In example the winning robot, conceived for a sterile environment, you are not going to see it again, this is the first and last time for you to see it. It is a design that is not very visible, but we are still creating behind the scenes.










































