I am completely exhausted. Yes, there are many, so many things I should see that I haven¡Çt seen yet.
It¡Çs almost impossible to describe the actual condition of Salone at present to let the readers get a clear picture of it. It can really kill you. The last day of this year¡Çs Salone, the Sunday every place of Milan, regardless its main exhibition arena or its streets, is full of people who don¡Çt want to miss the final day of this international trade show for this year. On top of that

The main show of Cassina is in Fiera. I¡Çd like to introduce its items I found on the streets with a few pictures I took. As a mogul company, it still has a great energy to go forward. Let me leave the report on Cassina to someone else, though.

I remember I saw around 20 of this cow in Marunouchi, Tokyo. I hear that some artist is showing it at big events all over the world through the sponsors the designer found. In short, it¡Çs a kind of project to exhibit cows all over the streets of Milan by inviting lots of artists to do that. It¡Çs one of the features of Salone.

This is a wonderful exhibition space I can never fail to visit every year. Though I don¡Çt know whether these works are its permanent exhibits or only for the period of Salone, it is showing items of excellence as usual. The towel hunger I introduced last year seems to have been not taken up for its collection. I cannot find it here this year.

I have brought here Canon 5D and the zoom lenses from 24 up to 105 for it, which I recently purchased. It¡Çs heavy stuff but the excellence of this photo equipment makes me very excited to take pictures. I can no more use portable small thin digital cameras. This Canon is a digital camera that enables its users to change ISO easily depending on the conditions of the places where photos are taken. If the place is dark, for example, you can set it to 1000 or 1500. In bright outside, 100 or 200

It may be the first time for Yamagiwa, being conscious of Salone, to exhibit its new line of products to be introduced at Euroluce. Yamagiwa entrusted several designers with their designs.
The one hanging from the ceiling was designed by Lovegrove. The lanterns with outer cocoon-like round fabric are the works of Tomio Ito. The small stands with LED are the works of Makio Hasuike well known for his brand of bags and accessories he designs. The ones of small round thick crystals with the

I¡Çve, too, revised the design for my small chair. In the first design, the angle of the bent part between the seat board and the backboard was precise 90 degrees. But the revised design has adopted a continuous curved line for the surface of its seat and back. One reason for this change is, of course, to improve the feeling for sitting on. There is also another crucial reason, that is, the difficulty of producing the wooden chair with its first design.
The angle between the seat board

Mr. Azumi came to visit Next Maruni¡Çs space. He scolded me though he was wearing great smiles for me. He said, ¡È Why isn¡Çt the story of my chairs written, here?¡É I answered, ¡ÈBecause I found no great difference from the ones last year.¡É I¡Çd like to develop to writing about the details as my answer to him may have been a kind of too blunt.
I put the photos of 4 chairs designed by Azumi for Next Maruni. The first photo shows the small chair(the photo with its plan-paper) commercia

The exhibition of Ingo Maurer is the one I¡Çm always looking forward to seeing in every year¡Çs Salone. This work may not be his own making but the one by someone Ingo gave his instructions. If you know whose work this is, please let me know. As Shigeru Uchida¡Çs ¡ÆWaves of Light¡Ç indicates, ¡Ælight¡Ç is an essence that always moves people¡Çs hearts with its eternal and dramatic nature.

In the yard of Triennale is a cabin by Shigeru Ban. The recyclable material of plastic and pulp molded in the forms of H and T like those of steel structures, makes up of this cabin. Some material used for its horizontal parts claimed to be recyclable are a little bent, which causes me a little worry.
Mr. Shigeru Ban is a professor of architecture under whose instruction my son, ¡ÇShou¡Ç is studying architecture. (Shou is in the junior year of a college now and is going to make his deb

The pictures here are showing the works exhibited at a super studio named ¡ÆNEW CREATIVE GENERATION/THAT¡ÇDESIGN¡Ç.
The exhibition here seems to be one having been planned to focus on young students, standing against Satellite that has been growing to be ever professional. The problem with the project like this is that its success or its failure is largely judged by the content of the exhibited works there.
The problem with ¡ÆThe Japanese Corps¡Ç I already mentioned seems to come

These are the photos of a one-man-show and a group exhibition.
The one-man-exhibition is the one presented by Mr. Toshiyuki Kita and the group-exhibition is the one taken charge of by Mr. Shigeru Uchida. Mr. Uchida¡Çs glass-tree and water-reflection are good. He says he made this glass-tree in Czech Republic. He also says water-reflection is the fruit of more than a few trials and errors.

By the way, Salone is made up of two big divisions. One of them is the huge trade-show area

This is a work presented at the theatre of D&G. They say the support of the D&G owner realized this presentation. All kinds of chairs are exhibited in Salone, some works of which are half-boiled art, some of which are only for their rational functions of chairs and some of which are ones hiding their vulgarness under the cover of the term, ¡ÆConceptual¡Ç. Among such variety, I don¡Çt think we can find a chair that hits us with such a strong impact as this chair. It barely manages to be a chai

¡ÆThe paradise of Mendini¡Ç is the name I myself gave to this chair and not the actual name of this work. The various activities of Mendini with the brilliant emergence of Post-Modern Movement are unforgettable memories of mine. His energetic activities and vivid worldview always come back to my heart like the experiences of being in the heavenly paradise. The splendor of this chair shown at the corner of the stage with its pride seems to me to be a message from the great paradise.

It has been placed here at the entrance of Triennale for sometime. There¡Çs a spiral-shaped galleria inside, which, I guess, for people to play there.

I¡Çm not quite familiar with the history and the cooperate principle of the company, Moroso. I¡Çd like each of readers to check and understand them. This company looks, in fact, very interesting to me. What I wrote in another report on ¡ÆCommon Patterns¡Ç is actually concerning Moroso. I¡Çm not even sure how to pronounce this company name but I¡Çve found a fresh but a kind of lofty achievement in its products. The modern design completed by eliminating all the decorative elements impresses us

Needless to say, Tokujin is excellent at presenting his works. He is not so much a product designer as a display designer. His eyes to see things in the context he creates are something beyond what most product designers can see. It¡Çs the design of how things should be seen.
Tokujin never gives up his attitude to seek for what his mind detects. The work he introduced at the exhibition of Lexus, ¡Æa chair like bread¡Ç is now completed, being ready for commercialization. Of course, in it

I never fail to visit Triennale. It always has various exhibition programs some of which may be good and others of which may be not good. Where are the exhibitions of Mr.Kuma and Mr.Kenya Hara supposed to be held? They must be being held as presentations of a Japanese real-estate company. As this photo shows, at Triennale such variety of programs are taking place simultaneously as lectures given at the open space, Modern Italian Exhibition organized by Andrea Brandy and so on.
I cannot

KUMA¡Çs work is very close to the very Japanese itself. He is making use of Japanese esthetic sense to almost excessive extent. But it¡Çs good. Though it¡Çs my belief that true estheticism should be the expression of the sense of beauty that an individual finds through introspection of his or her own mind and that holds good in the modern society, KUMA¡Çs work seems to go on the verge of falling into pop and vulgar cultural concept of Japan. Such a method as this he uses seems to have been we

The more sophisticated its products become, the less clear their designers¡Ç ideas seem to become. I miss those old days when TOTO, a small local company, was making great efforts to find good designs for its products. I believe design for each single item must come first, which tells us the designer¡Çs dedication having been put in his or her work. What I wanted to see is such genuine efforts each designer has made for the creation of the particular product.
Now that the products of TO

It reminds me of the groups of travelers that were seen everywhere in Europe. Many Italian designers seem to welcome this festive fuss saying, ¡È Oh, I think this is good liquor.¡É The liquors exhibited there together with the huge miniature of Tokyo made by Mori Building are the center of people¡Çs attention.

Wondering where on earth ¡Ædesign¡Ç is gone, I looked for some elements of it. What I found are jostling objects placed on each of small exhibition-board of the size of £±£²£°

The design-team of YAMAHA that has been continuously making excellent designs for their electrical musical instruments finally arrived at Milan Salone. The concepts and their expressions they have given to their products represent their most original forms to the almost unprecedented degrees in the past. Showing their products may be enough to let us know the revolutionary and the miraculous findings they have made.

They may have thought that holding music performances by means of o

To show Lexus. That is the purpose of this demonstration. Tokujin Yoshioka inspired us with his striking expression last year. Based on the concept of ¡ÆToyota versus Tokujin¡Ç , the exhibition of Lexus and the chairs by Tokujin was creating a very impressive effect to be remembered for a long time.

This year, however, the ideas and the conceptual structures seem to be a little vague.
Though they are trying to present the collaborated expression between architects and Toyota¡Çs

I walk all around Satellite. I do this not only for writing this ¡Æ Salone Report ¡Ç but also for finding the designers I should invite to participate in ¡ÆDesigners¡Ç Catalogue¡Æ, an annual event held in July at Design Gallery of Ginza Matsuya Department Store. The most important purpose of this event is to find young designers we are to back up. The designers sought for may not be matured yet but should be promising ones in the future. Almost all designers I¡Çve selected for this event in

I¡Çm obsessed with patterns. I remember, 40 years ago, I was always asking myself what ¡Ædecoration¡Ç should be like. And I thought that without attaining the ultimate answer for this question, it might be impossible to know the essential nature of designs. I recently started to work on the production of porcelain in Jingdezhen in China. There, I encountered characteristic antique patterns the excellence of which moved me and, at the same time, began to make me suspect that something seems to

Each of the table and the chair, here, is made of a folded plastic sheet. At a glance, you may think they are just works with the use of cardboard but the actual works are made of solid and strong plastic sheets with wonderful texture. The lines of perforations at their corners give us such an impression that the sheets of plastic board are bent along these lines.

¡ÆOne sheet of cloth¡Ç is a work of Issey Miyake, the idea of which is to make things from a sheet of cloth. Let¡Çs take a look at several examples. The concept of a ¡Æsheet¡Ç is, needless to say, essential to furniture.
Furniture works as furniture as far as they have flat surfaces to hold things. Even if it floats in the air like a magic flying carpet, it works as far as it has flat surfaces for supporting our buttocks and backs, holding coffee cups, books, lights, etc.
No matte

The works of Starck, now, seem to have come to represent all the French estheticism.
With its calm gracefulness, I like the works of Starck now better than those in the past. I felt a kind of weird impression about them, though. Every work being introduced gives us an impression of collaborated work with someone else. The chair in this photo, for example, is named ¡ÆPhilippe Starck by DOLCE & GABBANA¡Ç. Here the name ¡Æ Starck¡Ç seems not so much the designer¡Çs name as a brand name. ¡

Two lounge chairs introduced by Next Maruni. One of them is a work of Alberto Meda. The other is a work of Tetsu Sumii, the Grand Prix winner of the International Competition. Meda¡Çs chair perfectly meets the requirement of the assigned theme, that is, a chair that lets its sitter feel sleepy with its comfort. If you feel sleepy, you can fall asleep just by unfolding its back to make it flat. The frames on both sides are made to

The time of Milan Salone comes around. Hotels and streets there have begun to have its special air of tension and excitement.. People from around the world get together here in Milan and those who work here let me hear a variety of opinions and rumors.
Some say, ¡ÈIt seems some college students from London are showing their works at Satellite.¡É , Others say, ¡È It looks like Salone is only for Italy and Japan.¡É In anyway, the enthusiasm of Japanese on Milan Salone seems to have re