Han Han is a high stool composed entirely of bold cylinders, made of bare aluminum and wood.

Furniture and interior design project for an Indian/Nepalese restaurant AAKU. At the same time, it was my experimentation and practice in spatial perception.

Personally, a space is a collection of objects, a composition, and when designing an interior, the objects were always designed as a preliminary step. Architectural elements such as floors, walls, and ceilings are the boxes that contain the objects and are treated as backgrounds in the composition. Interior design projects also serve as prototypes for the design of new objects, and the objects are supposed to behave as pieces that will be separated from the interior after construction is completed. (Needless to say, clients' generous understanding and cooperation are essential.) In this project, by slightly blurring the above design order, I have attempted to construct a relationship in which the architecture is actively incorporated into the composition, and the figure and the ground are interchanged depending on the perspective.

The site was built in the late '60s, with many materials mixed in an area of about 45 square meters. The floor was bordered by a concrete block wall that once divided the room into two halves, one side of which had a terrazzo with brass joint, and the other side had a concrete floor at a level about 40mm lower than the other. The entrance walls and its skirting boards are also covered with different terrazzo, and when the veneer and deteriorated cloth were removed from the interior walls, some patterns of finishes were discovered, as if several colors of paint had been sprinkled on the concrete wall. The terrazzo floor, whose edges were chipped by the demolition process, creates a fluctuating border with the new concrete floor poured to the same level. The curved lines of the randomly bent hanger racks and the handles echo this boundary. The counters and tables were given an uneven, rough texture with a plaster finish normally used on outdoor wall surfaces. These organic elements are contrasted with furniture made of FRP grating with orderly grids. The seat of the chairs and high stools is made of an original blend of elastic pavement material used in athletic fields and parks. This material is also used for entrance signage and coasters. The shelf for displaying vessels and other items for sale is made of terrazzo to match the finish of the existing building, and waste materials from the FRP manufacturing process are mixed in as aggregate to create a new texture.

When I try to apply my creativity to interior design as a designer who mainly deal with objects, I think that an attempt to expand the object-oriented view to architecture may be a viable approach. The search for a way to deal with the concept of space will continue.

The furniture series using FRP grating was named El El, terrazzo using waste from the FRP manufacturing process was named Suwa Suwa, randomly bent hardware was named Un Nari, and furniture plastered for exterior walls was named Tei Tei.

Terrazzo mixed with waste materials co-produced in the FRP manufacturing process as aggregate.

FRP, which is difficult to recycle and dispose of, is often demonized from the standpoint of environmental impact, but it also has the advantage of high durability and long-term use. I am provided with such FRP waste materials and used them as aggregate for terrazzo. Terrazzo is produced by Fujita Sakan, a group of plasterers who specializes in restoring cultural properties and even developing experimental materials.

It may be hard to affect the production/consumption cycle by designing a few pieces of furniture, but it is possible to play in the nooks in the cycle.

Series of randomly bent steel hardware. An attempt to play with architectural elements by interpreting them as objects.

Series of furniture finished by plasterers with external-wall materials to give it an uneven, rough texture.

El El is a furniture system using FRP grating and ready-made hardware. This project is also an attempt to reconstruct my perspective on architectural and urban details on a furniture scale, a system that utilizes the square grid to fulfill a variety of forms and functions. The seating surfaces of the chairs and high stools are made from an original blend of elastic paving material used in athletics tracks and parks.

Stage design for kudos' first presentation, Lost and Found.

The intention for the stage design was its improvisation and temporality, as well as depicting the rhythm associated with the collection.

Orange transport pallets stacked at random heights were wrapped in kudos’ shirt fabric remnants in a few layers, and tied with suspender elastic remnants. Power cables hung from near the ceiling were curled in random positions.

Models sometimes walked, ran, jumped, sat, and shouldered on the stage.

El El is a set of prototypes for a furniture system using FRP grating and ready-made hardware, proposed for a multi-purpose space GAID. This project is also an attempt to reconstruct my perspective on architectural and urban details on a furniture scale, a system that utilizes the square grid to fulfill a variety of forms and functions.

The original use of FRP grating is as a building material, such as an exterior wall of a commercial building or a balcony fence, and the most obvious use is as a drainage cover. The hardware used in this project came from a variety of sources, including grating fixings, clamps for putting up bird prevention nets, wire rope winches, marine rope hardware, knurled knobs, and long cap nuts. They are powder-coated in the same color to make them equivalent, acting as if they were originally for these pieces of furniture.

GAID has a fluid use as a store/gallery/office/warehouse that opens irregularly. Although no architectural alterations were made, the furniture was placed in a parasitic way in some parts, such as the hanger racks hung with wire ropes and fixed to beams with clamps, and the desk fixed to a pillar. The hanger racks can be raised to the ceiling by hand winches, and the space left open by this can be used for exhibitions and other purposes.

Zui Conn collection is a series of furniture made of Noto Hiba cypress, widely found in the Noto Peninsula, chainsaw carved and dyed with a mixture of pine soot and persimmon tannin.

These furniture pieces are created in collaboration with Shigeki Yamaguchi, a lumber dealer, and attempt to semantically expand "solid wood" by treating not only the solid Noto Hiba but including Yamaguchi as one new material. I learned that Yamaguchi was a fan of Isamu Noguchi and George Nakashima, and that his hobby was chainsaw carving, after visiting his studio several times. He used three different chainsaws with different blade lengths and horsepower to boldly yet delicately carve the texture onto the surface of Noto Hiba. The round tips of the chainsaw blades left traces of their shapes, and textural switchovers were created in the wood longer than the length of the chainsaw blades.

I combined these materials to shape them into furniture and dyed them with a mixture of pine soot and persimmon tannin. Due to its aesthetic beauty of the pure black color and its antiseptic and insect repellent properties, this mixture was commonly used to finish wooden exterior walls until the influx of paint from the West at the end of the Edo period.

The direct and symbolic influence of the process of choosing where to buy from and who to buy from on the output might be described as cultural traceability.

Furniture/interior design for Fudge Up Nothing, a clothing store in Kanazawa, Ishikawa. The store's branding concept is to introduce things that are still unrecognized or overlooked from altered perspectives and is characterized by equivalently treating a wide range of elements: clothing (selection of young brands, vintage clothes, original clothes), objects, music, zines, and so on.

Under a concept of "a storehouse of overlooked materials," I chose materials that should be familiar to people in the area, such as local stone, wood, and aluminum which is produced in abundance in this region, and aimed to bring a new perspective to them for the store. The reason for choosing local materials is that they can most clearly express altered perspectives to overlooked things to the local people who visit the stores. Using local materials is advantageous in terms of carbon footprint, shipping costs, and material costs as it allows to trade without middlemen, and not having middlemen is also a choice that creates communication with the local people involved in manufacturing.

More than 2t of Nikka stone, a tuff that was once quarried in Komatsu City, about 30 km from Fudge Up Nothing, is used. The Nikka stone retains some of its original skin and was combined with bare aluminum pipes, aluminum honeycomb panels, glass, and wood dyed with persimmon tannin. Towards the end of the construction, I asked photographer Yukito Kono to take photos of the quarry site, under the guidance of Masashi Nakajima, a stonemason, and friend of mine. Fudge Up Nothing is vaguely divided into retail and office areas, the divider of which is made of fabric printed with the photograph. The mountain surface of the Nikka stone quarry is also a landscape that you can see when driving in Komatsu, and the photos of the divider present the indigenous nature of the material.

The wood used was the Noto Hiba cypress, which is widely found in the Noto Peninsula. I met Shigeki Yamaguchi, a lumber dealer, through an introduction from Nakajima, and in the course of my interaction with him, I learned that he enjoys chainsaw carving as his hobby. The cypress used for the counter and benches were chainsaw-carved by Yamaguchi and then dyed with a mixture of pine soot and persimmon tannin. This was an attempt to semantically expand the "solid" wood by considering not only the wood itself but including Yamaguchi, who handles the wood, as one material. The result was s solid with a rough, wavy texture that gave off a dull black sheen. The joint works with Yamaguchi are also planned to be developed as an independent furniture series.

Clothing racks made of Nikka stone and bare aluminum pipes.

The focus is on the relationship and the balance of gravity between those materials.

Deformable and flexible identity design.