RE-DESIGNーThe Daily Products of the 21st Century BOOK
2000
Exhibition:Takeo Paper Show 2000
CL:Takeo Co.,Ltd
Date:April,2000-
Place:Aoyama Spiral Garden&Spiral Hall,Tokyo
World Tour:Glasgow,U.K./Copenhagen,Denmark
/Hong Kong/Tronto,Canada/Shanghai,China
/Shenzhen,China/Beijing,China
Planner/Organizer:Kenya Hara
Production Coordinator:Hara Design Institute,NDC
and Takeo Co.,Ltd
RE DESIGN
The "re-design" project focuses on re-designing the familiar forms of everyday products. In 2000 we held the RE-DESIGN Exhibition, asking creators from a variety of fields to design some very ordinary commodities, including toilet paper and matches. This project is neither a re-proposal of everyday objects nor a sort of gag. It was an attempt to present--in the differences between the conventional products and these designers' proposals--the compelling essence of design. Although each participant was given a different design theme, they all came up with creative responses that brought up one question after another, somewhat compensating for the nascent nature of our original question. Each of these everyday products has its own unique mode of production and history, while the creators have their distinct ideas about making things. Please enjoy the combination of these thoughts and stories, along with the actual objects.
RE-DESIGNーThe Daily Products of the 21st Century BOOK
RE-DESIGNーThe Daily Products of the 21st Century BOOK
2000
Answered by Shigeru Ban
Shigeru Ban: Toilet Paper
Architect Ban is known around the world for designing buildings using paper tubes. He has a genuine reason for this approach. Paper tubes can be produced at a low cost and can be recycled when they are no longer needed. Toilet paper attracted his interest. Ban's re-designed toilet paper has a square tube. The conventional round roll smoothly supplies more paper, "swoosh, swoosh". The square roll resists, functioning to reduce resource consumption. What's more, when packaged, the square rolls fit together nicely, saving space in transportation and storage.
2000
Answered by Masahiko Sato
Masahiko Sato: Exit/Entry Stamps
Masahiko Sato was once an advertising director, and is currently a professor at the Graduate School of Film and New Media, Tokyo University of the Arts, who's popular with the students. The common thread among all of his projects is a cool pursuit of the hidden rules of communication and an exceptional application of those rules.We asked Sato to work on exit and entry stamps for passports at international airports. Sato came up with the solution that generates a moment of contact between stamp and traveler: an "ah-ha!" moment that overflows with goodwill in the back of the traveler's mind.
2000
Answered by Kengo Kuma
Kengo Kuma: Roach Trap
Kengo Kuma is an intelligent architect. He engages his mind to the purpose of curbing two things: the destiny of monumental, authoritarian architecture, and the individual's desire to create an idiosyncratic depiction via architecture. From this architect, we requested a re-design of a roach trap. Kuma's re-design proposal is a roll of adhesive tape. To use it, you cut off the desired length and fold it into a square tube. The inner part is adhesive. The outside of the section joints are coated with an adhesive mixture as well so that the tube-shaped roach trap can be placed vertically on walls, too.
2000
Answered by Kaoru Mende
Kaoru Mende: Matches
Lighting designer Kaoru Mende usually works on lighting projects for public spaces. Ultimately, Mende is a designer of light itself, not a person who designs lighting appliances. We asked him to design matches. Match design is the design of the fire that's most familiar, which is in the lighting field.Mende came up with the solution of natural twigs whose tips are coated with a combustible substance. In short, his concept is to give these dried twigs a final role (as matches) prior to their return to the soil. Taking a closer look, we notice that the sticks actually have quite aesthetically pleasing shapes.
2000
Answered by Kosuke Tsumura
Kosuke Tsumura: Daipers
Fashion designer Kosuke Tsumura experiments to find new kinds of relationships between clothes and human beings, producing designs that change the way we think about clothes. Here, he was asked to re-design diapers for adults. Functionally, disposable diapers have reached a high standard, but thinking about putting them on can make you feel a little miserable. Tsumura took that into account by designing diapers styled as a pair of trunks. That gave an aesthetically pleasing product. However, Tsumura took the idea further. He went on to propose an entire set of clothing including T-shirts and running shirts, all capable of absorbing bodily secretions. The diaper became just one item in the set. When you need the protection of diapers, all you have to do is select the appropriate item from a familiar series. Tsumura's design successfully removes the psychological resistance to wearing diapers.
2000
Answered by Keiko Hirano
Keiko Hirano: Boxes of Tissue Paper
The aesthetics of Keiko Hirano is represented by a penetrating spirit of inquiry. Even the slightest bit of mist would be dispersed by her insight one way or another. We asked her to redesign a tissue paper box. The conventional product, in which the tissues are pulled out vertically one after the other, is functional, but not beautiful. Hirano's solution is five differently sized boxes matching the sizes of individual packages of ordinary products. The grey color of these boxes is that used for many types of office equipment. Applying this color weakens the incongruous nature of the product, and helps camouflage it in its environment. Her solution is not object-based, but focuses on the relation between an object and the environment.
2000
Answered by Makoto Orisaki
Makoto Orisaki: Paper Plate
Artist Makoto Orisaki explores ways to solve problems that are difficult to settle through a single-discipline approach; he succeeds by moving back and forth among art and design, graphics and products.When we asked him to participate in this re-design project, Orisaki wanted to design a product that could actually be used. Starting from this request, he re-designed a paper plate. This flat paper plate metamorphoses into a three-dimensional object. Orisaki explored the dynamics between the hand and the paper, called into existence the contact point where these two intersect and drew lines where they're interrelated. This device makes it possible for us to hold both the plate and a cup in one hand for stand-up meals.
2000
Answered by Naoto Fukasawa
Naoto Fukasawa: Tea Bags
Naoto Fukasawa is a product designer whose designs seem to affect the unconscious realm. Fukasawa's re-design subject was the teabag. One of his ideas was to replace the tag on the end of the string with a ring made in the color of tea ready to drink. However, this was not an instruction to brew the tea until it reaches that color. As people use the product, they gradually become conscious of the relationship between the color of the tea and the ring, engendering thoughts such as "I like my tea brewed until it's a little darker than this ring." Another of Fukasawa's design solutions was a teabag in the form of a marionette. Dunking the teabag and moving it around, the user has the sensation of controlling a little string puppet. Thus, the wonder of the design only becomes apparent through the user's action.