rethinking, remaking, reframing

Aoki Akio, the founder of DESIGNART TOKYO discusses the importance and legacy of Tokyo's eminent art and design event, particularly for young creatives.

- Luo Jingmei

Tokyo's design scene was intensified for 10 days (18 to 27 October) with many exciting new ideas distributed throughout the city during Designart Tokyo 2024.

For example, at Tiers Gallery in Omotesando, Hojo Akira presented an aluminium sofa that addressed quality control and inventory management in the mass production process. Meanwhile the captivating blue-brown gradients of Masaya Kawamoto's PF Chair and PF Armchair came about from colouring the furniture with a salt bath process.

Over at Ginza’s Hibiya Okuroji, a 300m shopping and food promenade under century-old brick arches, design lab Honoka collaborated with one of Japan’s largest water server companies Aqua Clara, Inc. to showcase the potential of upcycling plastic bottles. The result are lamps, stools, bowls and even wall panels with a translucent, artful quality.

These were some of the 117 diverse presentations of Designart Tokyo 2024 in 96 venues across the metropolis. The design and art festival that started in 2017 embraced the theme of ‘Reframing: the Beginning of a Shift’ this year. It challenged presenters – architects, artists, product and interior designers – to think about their work through novel perspectives without being restrained by conventional frameworks.

The event’s founders are known experts in the industry – Akio Aoki of MIRU DESIGN, Shun Kawakami of artless Inc., Hiroshi Koike of NON-GRID, Okisato Nagata of TIMELESS, and Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham architecture. We find out more about Designart Tokyo from Aoki.

Before DESIGNART TOKYO started, were there other similar design fairs in Tokyo?

One was DesignTide Tokyo that happened from 2005 to 2012. Other than that, there was Tokyo Designers Week, which started in 1986 but stopped in 2016 due to an accident during the event.