Tag Archives: tokyo

This Minimal & Multifunctional Furniture Piece Serves As A Bench & A Shoe Rack

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Wood has been the material of choice for furniture designers for ages galore. And no wonder! There’s something about wood that instantly adds a sense of zen and calm to any living space it is placed into. It puts your mind at ease while managing to radiate a feeling of warmth and tranquility. It’s a minimal material that holds a strong personality without any additional frills and tassels. I truly believe a well-crafted piece of wooden furniture can add a magical touch to even the simplest of living spaces. Minimal, clean, and almost always soothing, beautifully designed wooden furniture helps add the ultimate finishing touch to a room. And, one such furniture design is ‘Tokyo’ by Teixeira Design Studio.

Designer: Teixeira Design Studio

I’m sure you’ve come across Teixeira’s designs on Instagram. They’re always minimal, well-designed, and highly functional. They instantly catch your eye with their sheer simplicity yet excellent utility. And Tokyo is no exception. Tokyo is an ingenious multifunctional design that merges a shoe rack and a bench. It artfully combines two furniture pieces into one individual furniture piece, providing dual functionality while occupying less space.

What makes Tokyo unique and special is its side leg, which gently and seamlessly curves, subtly embracing the cushion to create a top tray for daily essentials. This functions as a neat spot to store your souvenirs and other knick knacks. The furniture piece also features a bottom shelf which also serves as a nifty storage space. You can display and store whichever items you please. There is sufficient space to hold all your shoes and serve as a full shoe rack as well, or as a hybrid solution that accommodates your shoes as well as your books and bags.

While designing and creating Tokyo, the designer felt that the form and geometry of the furniture piece reminded him of Japanese architecture, and hence he named it Tokyo. All in all, Tokyo is a minimal and well-designed furniture piece with dual functionality that makes it a great addition to modern homes and contemporary living spaces.

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Tokyo’s quirky public toilet was designed to look like a large sink & includes a communal hand-washing basin

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Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto recently showcased the final installment of the Tokyo Toilet project – a public toilet that seamlessly merges a communal hand-washing design into its form and is meant to replace a toilet block near the Park Hyatt Tokyo Hotel in downtown Tokyo. The structure is the 17th toilet built in the city as a part of the Tokyo Toilet project. The project includes toilets designed by Pritzker Architecture Prize winners Toyo Ito, Tadao Ando, Fumihiko Maki, and Shigeru Ban.

Designer: Sou Fujimoto

“One could say that public toilets are a watering place in the middle of a city, a spring that supplies the town. They are available to various people who will use it for different reasons in addition to using the toilet, and I wanted to propose a space for washing hands as a public watering place,” said Fujimoto.  The toilet block was designed to mimic a large sink and includes a communal hand-washing area. It features an open-air corridor that segregates the all-white toilet block from the elliptical basin. The basin has been equipped with four taps installed at different heights. According to Fujimoto, it is “one vessel that is for everyone”.

“The shape, with a large depression in the middle, includes places for people of various heights to wash their hands so that everyone from children to older people can wash their hands within this vessel, creating a small community of people refreshing themselves and conversing. I hope this will be a new kind of public space, where people can gather surrounded by water,” Fujimoto continued.

Both the male and female toilets can be entered via the open-air corridor. But the disabled toilet and child-changing section has a different entrance at the end of the building. Much like the exterior, the interiors of the toilet are all-white accentuated by recessed lights positioned all over the walls. The toilet has a clean, concise, and minimal structure and aesthetic, much like the architecture commonly found in Japan. The Tokyo Toilet project is funded by the Nippon Foundation, and it includes other interesting toilets such as a cedar-clad public toilet designed by Kengo Kuma and a pair of transparent blocks by Shigeru Ban.

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Nendo’s polyhedral Christmas tree with sparkling star-shaped cutouts will get you in the holiday mood

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One of my favorite design studio Nendo recently created a gold-colored Christmas tree for the Tokyo Midtown shopping center in Roppongi, Tokyo, putting the whole of Tokyo and me in a Christmassy mood! The beautiful tree features kinetic cutouts, which were designed to mimic “sparkling lights”.

Designer: Nendo

Standing tall at 7.5 meters, the stunning Christmas tree has been placed in the middle of the shopping center and boasts a polyhedral surface crafted from flat metal panels that create a pyramid as a result of being bolted together. The panels feature little fluttering stars, and behind them are positioned 416 small and compact fans. The fans have been designed to move the panels in different patterns – up, down, and across the tree.

“The pieces not only sway and move with the wind but can also stop swinging in the air catching the wind at the programmed timing. By continuously receiving a certain amount of airflow, the pieces also float upward in a sustained manner,” said Nendo. The star-shaped patterns were designed to resemble sparkling lights and seemed to be swirling or flowing rhythmically around the tree, in a mesmerizing up-and-down pattern. Cutouts in the same color, that is matte champagne gold, have been hung from the ceiling.

“The theme glitter in the air translates to creating the uplifting and shimmering atmosphere, the very essence of Christmas, by literally generating ‘glitters’ by ‘air’,” said Nendo. These glittery and beautiful pieces are positioned on Tokyo Midtown’s garden terrace as well as its galleria and atrium terraces.

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An enigmatic cloud floats above Tokyo streets in this mesmerizing art installation concept

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Clouds are supposed to be ephemeral, gentle, and dreamy, but an art installation wants to literally bring those lofty concepts down to the ground in a way that boggles the eyes and the mind.

The “cloud” has long been the buzzword in tech, at least before the “metaverse” came to unseat it. Just as amorphous as its namesake, this cloud virtually looms over every facet of modern life, from our houses to our offices to even the streets we walk on. Clouds are intangible by nature, but one designer wants to turn clouds into something we can see and even touch, provoking our senses and our minds with a structure that looks both heavenly from a distance yet also a bit unnerving up close.

Designer: Vincent Leroy

It is almost fortuitous that its designer would call this tangible cloud a “Metacloud,” though it has little to do with the much-hyped metaverse. True to the original meaning of the phrase, this cloud is both a cloud and not at the same time. Made up of thin curved blades, the cloud-shaped sculpture would levitate over streets, flying low enough to be touched, unlike a real cloud.

The Metacloud seems to be built on a series of opposites, looking light and airy yet tangible and confining. It hovers ever so slightly above the ground, moving freely yet unable to break free of the pull of reality. The moire pattern is both enchanting and dizzying, playing with our perceptions as well as our emotions. It is set in the heart of one of the busiest cities in Japan while moving slowly with nary a care in the world.

The overlapping blades create a moire effect that creates something like a visual illusion. You can see through the Metacloud, and yet parts of the image are occluded by the blades, forcing your mind to fill in the gaps. It’s almost as if you’re stuck in the Twilight Zone, constantly alternating between what is and what isn’t. It is both unsettling yet mystifying at the same time.

It turns out that those are exactly the emotions that designer Vincent Leroy wants to evoke, plunging viewers into what he calls a waking dream. In the past years, cities like Tokyo have “dozed off with confinement,” and the Metacloud wants to poke our minds awake while still alternating between the real world and dreamland. Whether you’d call it a dream or a nightmare is a personal judgment call, and it’s exactly the kind of thought-provoking process that the art installation wants to trigger.

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Japanese artist’s face masks and wearables give off futuristic, dystopian world vibes

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Artist Ikeuchi Hiroto was obsessed with pop culture influences right from his childhood. The cinematic world of the Star Wars, the imaginary robotic animals of Zoids, or the intimidating form of the Gundam. In his early childhood days, Ikeuchi started crafting pieces out of PC parts and models. Later on, when he got hang of things, he graduated to more refined gadgets and mech gear creations to express his cyberpunk love. The artist started using industrial parts and repurposing ready-made plastic to achieve the form for his creations.

Recently the funk-obsessed artist joined forces with Balenciaga to create cyborg creations under the SS 2022 campaign. His largest-ever solo work exhibiting a wide range of high-tech mechanical masks is currently on display in an exhibition in Tokyo.  These masks transform the wearer into a cyborg of sorts, giving them an alienated appearance reminiscent of a future dystopian world. His work mostly employs recycled materials like motherboards and old plastic wiring. The reason is, as he explains, “It’s just that recent products are simple and small, and their parts don’t give me much room for customization, so old products allow me to use more parts for my work.”

The solo exhibition is showcasing the custom mechanical masks, VR headsets, wearable exoskeleton developed by Skeletonics (robotics company), and interactive works developed in collaboration with Prototype Inc. (a design firm). His exoskeletons are the perfect blend between fashion, art and tech – virtually blurring the lines between them all. Working with the icons of the fashion industry, Ikeuchi gave his opinion by saying, “I think it’s great that someone is redefining my work in their own subjective way, just like I use ready-made products in my own contexts.”

The wearables sculptures here are highlighted by the series of headgear having intricate gadgets such as reality masks, headphones and flashdrives. All of the creations function lending each one of them an experimental aesthetic. That privilege is reserved for the buyers of the artwork!

Designer: Ikeuchi Hiroto

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Tokyo’s unique Blue Bottle Cafe offers a safe experience for introverts & coffee lovers!

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If I want to be more productive, I usually go work in a cafe to have a change of space or do a coffee run as a reward for finishing my tasks. But ever since the pandemic started, it has almost been impossible to work in a cafe but it has also become trickier to pick up coffee while making sure sanitizer doesn’t get into it! But this Blue Bottle Coffee pop-up in Shibuya, Tokyo is making that little normal part of our lives safer by creating a contactless experience to get our coffees using AI robots.

The interior architecture is designed to utilize the technology of AI cafe robot ‘Root C’ which is a service that lets you order from a screen and pick up your fresh coffee from a capsule. There are multiple slots that make up a whole wall of lockers and it almost looks like capsule hotels but tinier for your drink!

Designed by the Schema Architectural Plan, the capsules resemble a beehive. Wood is used to add warmth and translucent acrylic that covers the capsule is inspired by the glow of honey. It is designed to make you feel comfortable even if you are staying for a short time, taking home a drink.

It is a simple way to adapt to the demand for contactless service and safety while still making it a pleasant experience (especially when compared to a drive-thru!). When the barista places the coffee in the locker, the capsule glows to alert you that you can pick up your drink.

The ordering and receiving locker system is only available in Blue Bottle’s Shibuya location for now. Not only does it reduce the risk of transmission and protect people, but it is also a blessing for introverts in all circumstances – ordering without interacting with anyone.

Designer: Schema Architectural Plan, New Innovations, and Blue Bottle Coffee

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IKEA Japan’s new Tiny Homes campaign rents out a furnished 10sqm micro-apartment for only $1 per month!

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IKEA Japan launched a Tiny Homes campaign that finds a 10sqm apartment in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district to make full use of its floor plan through space-saving furniture and a vertical layout.

All over the world, micro-living accommodations have made staying in even the busiest of cities possible. Tokyo, the most populous city in the world, has made strides in micro-living accommodations, from capsule hotels to shared living spaces.

Considering Tokyo’s populace of 14 million, it’s safe to say the city’s residents are familiar with tiny living solutions. As part of its Tiny Homes campaign, IKEA Japan has debuted a completely furnished 10sqm tiny apartment in the city’s Shinjuku district.

Known for its multifunctional furniture and convenient assembly, the IKEA brand’s living solutions come in all forms. Through its new Tiny Homes campaign, IKEA utilizes its collection of storage compartments and modular furniture to make the most out of tiny apartment spaces.

In the Shinjuku district, IKEA’s 10sqm apartment is organized vertically to make use of the floor plan’s lofty heights and furnished with an array of various space-saving furniture. Dividing the apartment into two levels, residents are greeted by the entryway, kitchenette, bathroom, and laundry machine.

Bringing residents to the apartment’s sleeping mezzanine area, a step ladder connects the first level to the second. Throughout the home, storage pieces like the IVAR storage system and SKÅDIS shelf unit outfit the apartment’s desk to make full use out of the home’s working area. Customizable by design, the IVAR storage system makes it easy for residents to transform the desk to fit their taste, by adding and removing storage modules as needed. Other pieces, like a sleeper sofa and furniture on wheels, morph the tiny apartment into a space for entertaining, sleeping, or working.

Designer: IKEA Japan

The post IKEA Japan’s new Tiny Homes campaign rents out a furnished 10sqm micro-apartment for only $1 per month! first appeared on Yanko Design.

Tokyo’s hotel designs new pandemic-era dining experience with transparent lanterns for guests to enjoy a face mask-free dinner!

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The Tokyo Lantern Dinner at the Hoshinoya ryokan in Otemachi, Tokyo provides transparent lanterns made from vinyl for dining guests to experience group dinners without wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Across the world, we’ve seen how the industry of design has impacted our response to the COVID-19 pandemic. From transparent dining pods to no-contact food trucks, designers have made eating out possible over these past three years. Even in 2021, COVID-19’s effect on dining out has stuck around and different versions of what we call the ‘new normal’ are still making rounds. At Hoshinoya, in Otemachi, Tokyo, a new dining experience called the ‘Tokyo Lantern Dinner,’ brings lanterns for each guest to use as transparent partitions against COVID-19 during group dinners.

Designed for dining guests to feel free and unmask during dinner, the lantern partitions were conceived by Hoshinoya for their familiarity with Japanese culture and customs. From the top of each lantern, soft, warm light pours over your head and meal, illuminating your facial expressions during conversation as well as the food on your plate. Produced by the long-established lantern store Kojima Shoten in Kyoto, each lantern measures 75-cm in diameter and 102-cm in height, leaving more than enough room to enjoy your meal without fear of splashing the transparent vinyl covering, which reaches 0.15 mm in thickness.

The designers behind Hoshinoya’s Tokyo Lantern Dinner created the experience to provide a space where loved ones who were kept apart due to the pandemic can meet and enjoy a quality meal together like we could before 2019. Limiting the dining area to 40-sqm, fresh, ventilated air is poured into the room 5.5 times per hour, around 11 times more than the average public setting in Tokyo.

Interested guests of Hoshinoya can make reservations for the Tokyo Lantern Dinner and dine with loved ones staying outside of the ryokan for ¥30,000 ($264.10) per group and ¥21,780 ($191.70) per person, The price includes a multi-course meal from a set menu called “Nippon Cuisine ~Fermentation~.” As described by Hoshinoya the menu contains, “A wide variety of fermented foods such as seasonings, soy sauce, and miso, which have been popular in Japan since ancient times, [as well as] preserved foods such as pickles and salted fish.”

Designer: Hoshinoya

This Japanese architect’s fairytale teahouse covered in a grassy facade is topped with a yakisugi-treated timber loft!

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Japanese architect and architectural historian Terunobu Fujimori is known for his quirky teahouses and fondness for unusual city structures. His latest tea house transports an elf’s cottage from the pages of a fairytale to the concrete of Tokyo. Featuring grassy facades, timber treated with yakisugi, and a lofty vista point, the teahouse, called Goan, is sightly positioned in front of the new National Stadium of Tokyo where it remained until 5 September 2021 in celebration of the 2020 Summer Olympics.

Poking out from the corner of one facade, visitors can crawl through a circular hole, traditionally known as a ‘Nijiriguchi,’ to gain entry to the tea room’s interior. Moving inside, visitors pass through the grassy exterior and are welcomed by an entirely unstained wooden first floor. Functioning as a reinterpretation of ‘Nijiriguchi,’ a small wooden staircase and ladder connects the bottom floor with the upper tea room.

Upstairs, visitors can enjoy a cup of tea and a view of the National Stadium designed by Kengo Kuma. From the outside, the upstairs tearoom inside Goan is visually separated from the first floor with a timber exterior constructed from yakisugi treated wood, a traditional Japanese method of wood preservation. The tea room is swaddled in polished natural wooden panels and furniture, giving the room an air of organic warmth.

Standing as one of eight pavilions that are designed to showcase Japan’s future of urban architecture and art, the Goan Teahouse was installed as part of the city’s Pavilion Tokyo 2021 initiative. The initiative coincided with the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, where six world-renowned Japanese architects and two artists each designed a one-of-a-kind pavilion for fans of the games and city visitors and residents to enjoy.

Designer: Terunobu Fujimori

Plots of grass were used to cover the exterior of Goan, a natural choice for Fujimori. 

Inside, visitors access the upper tearoom via a wooden staircase and ladder, a reinterpretation of ‘nijiriguchi.’

Upstairs, visitors can enjoy a cup of tea and city views inside a room decked out in polished natural wood.

The National Stadium designed by Kengo Kuma is a direct sightline from the upper vista point inside the tearoom. 

Fujimori worked alongside undergraduate architecture students from Ouchida Laboratory to finish Goan. 

Fujimori’s plans for Goan are now on display at the Watarium Art Museum.

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This floating concrete public bathroom comes outfitted with dark wood accents and an open sun roof!

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When it comes to public bathrooms in cities, unfortunately, functionality sometimes overshadows a bathroom design’s overall appeal – they never look too inviting. It’s fair to say, we typically set our expectations low – too low – before opting for communal bathrooms in the city’s public parks or transportation buildings. In Tokyo’s Sendagaya Station, however, one architect designed an exception. Suppose Design, a Tokyo-based architecture, and design firm, recently finished work on Sendagaya Station’s public bathroom and while its dark wood interiors and shining steel faucets might make you feel like you’ve accidentally walked into a hotel’s bathroom, you’ve still got a train to catch.

From the outside, Sendagaya Station’s public bathroom is a massive, yet unassuming concrete block that seems to float aboveground, reaching heights of 7.5 meters. Upon closer look, following nature’s call, the monolithic cube of concrete houses an elegant and comfortable space for travelers to use the bathroom and prep for their next train ride or freshen up before starting their stay in Tokyo. Inside, Accoya wood panels line the walls and embrace warm lighting for a relaxed and sensuous overall experience. Accoya wood, generally known for its impressive durability, equips pine wood with a finish that stands the test of time for upwards of 50 years, surpassing the longevity even in that of teakwood.

During the day, sun rays flow through the installment’s exposed roof and produce geometric beams of sunlight that bounce and ricochet off the gleaming brass accents and doorknobs, as well as the deep red wooden doors that will change color over time in accordance with exposure to the sun. Each stall is further equipped with an automatic toilet, baby-changing station, and a large control panel that offers different mechanical features for toilet use such as a front and rear bidet, two pressure options for flushing, as well as a sound barrier for privacy when it comes to nature’s more urgent matters.

Located in a city facility predominantly used for transportation and transition, the public bathroom as designed by Suppose Design for Sendagaya Station provides travelers with a spacious and welcoming respite, much needed after long travel days. If you’re coming from one city for a long trip in Japan, then Suppose Design’s public bathroom will welcome you well. Alternatively, if your trip to Sendagaya Station marks the end of a previous trip, this giant cube of concrete stands ready to welcome you home.

Designer: Suppose Design