Yellow Plastic Orchestra

Ryuichi Sakamoto contemplates being immortalized in plastic by Medicom Toys










Part of a three set immortalizations of Sakamoto's first band Yellow Magic Orchestra













And here is the classic YMO cover from which the idea came - X∞ Multiplies

Isamu and Isamu

Saw a brilliant exhibition at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City on Sunday (my favorite museum in the city). Design: Isamu Noguchi and Isamu Kenmochi brought together furniture and design work from the two famous Isamu's who first met in architect Kenzo Tange’s office and then became long term friends and brief collaborators on a "basket" chair. The chair was never manufactured and the prototype was lost but a special reproduction of the seat (seen above with Noguchi-san sitting left and Kenmochi-san sitting right) was painstakingly recreated over a seven month period by Kenmochi Design Associates office in Japan. Working from photographs they recreated Kenmochi’s basket-weaving plans for the seat / back rest and Noguchi’s idea for an iron base. The chair had pride of place in the museum's upstairs galleries where it was used as the opening slot for the exhibition .

Doing some research online I also discovered that the museum recently sold a special limited edition run of 50 of the chair at this years ICFF show for the astronomical price of $9,500 each. Seems like the museum is putting the money to good use because all summer long the classic Noguchi garden is closed for renovations. I am also told they are making drastic improvements to the building by installing new climate control systems. Here's a clear picture of the chair sans designers.



I can't say personally that it's my favorite Noguchi design or my favorite Kenmochi design either but it does serve as an interesting point of intersection between two incredible designers and worked as a good jumping off point for the exhibition. Here's some pictures of the galleries including a room of Araki lights (by Noguchi) and two rooms of furniture by Kenmochi.





The middle picture here is a setting that includes the "Kashiwado Chair" created for Tendo Mokko by Kenmochi-san. It retails for around $10K in America but is just over half that in Japan where it's around $5700. Without a doubt one of the most expensive chairs out there - I guess thats what it costs to get solid pieces of polished cedar. The chair is named after and was created for famous Sumo wrestler Kashiwado in 1961. Makes sense then that it is so solid.



Kenmochi-san's most famous design is the far more accessible, lighter and probably less Sumo friendly 1960 "C3150" rattan chair also produced for Tendo Mokko Co (seen in the third picture above). The chair was, until now, not available in the US. The Noguchi museum are distributing it but the price is expensive at $2,200 - understandable though given how each chair is made by hand. Below is a picture of Kenmochi-San sitting in it. The chair was original designed for a luxury hotel lounge in Tokyo. In 1964 it was selected to be a part of the permanent collection of NYC's Museum of Modern Art and many site it as the first Japanese furniture design to cross national borders.



The museum store also had a great DVD about the making of this chair made by Kenmochi's family. In a short ten minutes it features Kenmochi discussing the making of the chair and shows the process of it's construction alongside this informative text - "The making of the chair began with Kenmochi approaching a rattan craftsman with only sketches in hand. He stood aside collaboratively instructing every detail. Thus, it's endless curve and form has trace of plan or diagram, but simply recorded in the arms of the craftsman. With no successor today, there remains only one craftsman capable of crafting this legendary chair."



After meeting and working with Noguchi, Kenmochi-san along with other leading designers such as Riki Watanabe (Moma just reintroduced one of his clock designs), Yusaku Kamekura (a brilliant graphic designer), and (my personal favorite) Sori Yanagi, formed the International Design Committee. All of these designers created work that is especially exciting to me in the way that it captures a mixture of eastern and western influences (look at how Kenmochi is sitting in his own chair for a great example of that in action). Another special quality of course is the clean, distinct sense of simplicity at play. Certainly there is a huge amount of renewed interest worldwide in the work of these designers whose influence can be seen in the work of people like Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa who have both attempted to define this design as "super normal."

An additional point - there is a book attached to the show - it's without a doubt one of the most poorly designed books I've purchased in quite some time. With such exciting material to work with the presentation (not content) is lacklustre. A shame really because if just a little more had been spent on it's graphics then this could be a publication to really create a cult for Kenmochi outside Japan. As it is the book is one for people like me who simply want to have something in our library to remind us of Kenmochi's work. I am told there was a fantastic retrospective of his work in Japan a few years back but extensively googling has brought no results though there may well be a catalogue for it.

Kyoto on the cheap

I wish I could get on a plane RIGHT NOW - New York Times exposes how to do Kyoto on the cheap.

Outdoor In

House A (2005)
Ryue Nishizawa

Wegner in Hiroshima

The brand new "Hiroshima" dining chair by Naoto Fukasawa (the man behind Muji's Wall CD player with a string) for Maruni reminds me of the iconic classic Hans Wegner chair but with a very now flair. It looks comfortable and classy.

80 sq m in Shibuya

The Yoyogi house designed by two-year-old practice frontofficetokyo. Check out the building process

Another Japanese House

Regular readers will probably suspect by now that I love modern Japanese houses and it's true I do. In fact I would say my interest is close to an obsession. For me many of the issues I'm trying to resolve in my own head about the house of my dreams are solved in some of these houses and when they aren't at least new ideas are always presented and those ideas tend to open up new avenues of thought. There is simply something very special at play in terms of dimension, use of light, placement of floors and windows, clever use of awkward plot size, use of wood, the application of white space and how the definement of room use is played out - these are just some of the interesting issues to consider and ponder.

Here's pics of the new N HOUSE by Jun Aoki located between the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama - some fascinating ideas but I can barely imagine what the cleaning job would be like.







Personally I would much rather live in Aoki-San's 2007 design - the J HOUSE just for this entrance and garden even though inside it is equally white and an intense cleaning maintenance job.

Ichi Freaks Rejoice

Ichi Freak = a fan of Zatoichi movies.



News of a new Ichi movie is very exciting indeed. The twist this time ? In Sori Fumihiko's upcoming 2008 ICHI movie - Zatoichi is now a woman. From the short bits revealed it looks like it might just work. Former idol singer and model, young actress Haruka Ayase plays blind swordsman Ichi and supposedly no doubles were used for the swordfight scenes. The actress spent a month in intense training with sword action supervisor Hiroshi Kuze (who worked with Akira Kurosawa on "Ran"). Rumors have it this is no Azumi style movie and it's faithful in spirit to the original flicks whilst still bringing something new. Can't wait to see how she recreates / updates Ichi's unique sword style. Ayase has very big feet to step into not only those of original Ichi Shintarô Katsu-San, who for many, myself included, is still unsurpassable, but she also has to take on those of Takeshi Kitano who already successfully recreated Ichi for the 21st century. Director Sori Fumihiko previously directed "Ping Pong" and the 3D SF CGI epic "Vexville" which featured an exclusive cut from Carl Craig on the soundtrack. He is well respected. Sadly we will probably have to wait until 2009 to see this stateside and subtitled.

Meanwhile our chances of ever seeing cult director Takashi Miike's current Tokyo theatrical staging of a Zatoichi play seem pretty much to be zero.

And Ichi fever shows no signs of slowing down with Sonny Chiba, under his newly created alias of Rindo Wachinaga, announced his first directorial project ZA TOICHI (English title The Toichi). The script written by Chiba is said to be take it's themes from the TV series of Zatoichi. Relatively unknown actor Ginji Yoshikawa (who previously worked with Steven Segal) is confirmed for the lead role of a moneylender who, like the swordsman Zatoichi, is blind. There is a possibility that Chiba will co-star under his acting name. The film's budget is reportedly 200 million yen and filming is scheduled to begin in April, followed by a possible Japanese release in the fall.

Modernist Films of Japan pt1

I'm a sucker for Japan's new wave in the same way I was a sucker for the French, Italian, American and Czech ... after all who can deny a trailer like this?



Kiju Yoshida's 1966 movie "Woman In The Lake" is about to be released on DVD for the first time outside of Japan in France as part of a series of complete Yoshida DVDs. Now where's Criterion ?

Yoshida's "Eros Plus Massacre" was one of my favorite discoveries of 2007 - yeah I know I'm way behind. Here's a clip from it

The Bendy House

Around this time every year Japanese magazine Casa Brutus publish a special edition called "My House" that features a selection of the most exciting new houses in Japan. I've been buying it for the last four years and still find each issue inspirational so of course I'm really looking forward to the new 2008 edition. I am especially keen to see this "bendy house" (my phrase) from a fresh duo with a lot of buzz on them - TNA (Makoto Takei and Chie Nabeshima).




The official name for the building (located in the Himonya neighborhood in Tokyo) is the Mosaic House. The house was also featured in Mark Magazine (issue 10). The special idea here is that the entire functions of the house are on an inverted layout with the family living mostly at the top of the house which is covered with one massive skylight. See more pictures and other TNA projects at their website.

Ama No To

Sake tasting at Sakaya on Friday night before a great indian dinner and Dub War's dubstep night with D1. Out of the three Ginjo's offered to us by Sake Sommelier Paul Tanguay (of importers Vine Connections) both myself and Stephen agreed that Ama No To's - "Heavens Door" Tokubetsu Junmai was the hands down winner.


Ama No To's - "Heavens Door" is made by Asamai Shuzo Co - one of the smallest of forty two original breweries in the Akita Prefecture. In Japan you can even read a book about the company and their struggles in making sake - it's called "Natsuta Fuyuzo" (Summer In The Fields, Winter In the Brewery) and was written by master brewer Koichi Moriya. Asamai Shuzo Co have won five straight Gold Prizes in the prestigious National New Saké tasting competitions.

The water used is a famous (since the Edo Period 1600-1868) very soft spring water from a source close to the brewery - it helps give the sake a very mild, and to my palate, appealing after taste. The sake received the name "Heaven's Door" from an an old song. One person describing it said it's "(nutty) flavors with a bit of bread dough" and is said to have "a gentle sweetness beneath." Here's a Fact Sheet.

Here's pictures (by Kenji Nachi) of the team behind the sake and a beautiful shot of the fields where the rice is grown

Most exciting new building in New York ?

I wish the New York Times quote above also applied to the art inside the building and not just the building itself. But you can't blame Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (aka SANAA) for that. The New Museum lost a great opportunity during it's December extended free opening days by proving to the skeptics that despite how cool the building is outside, the art inside is still the same BS compilation of junk forms. It's debut show, which isn't even worth mentioning by name, is simply the kind of drivel that the over-geeky, over-obsessed on art theory, university-inbred numskulls think is cool. They would have been way better off just doing a cool retrospective of one artist - say someone like Julie Mehretu, who has been featured in their group shows in the past. Honestly their inaugural show almost made me NEVER want to step foot in the building ever again but thankfully last night I got to take part in a special one-off tour of the building with SANAA senior associate Florian Idenburg.

Our tour started on the seventh floor. A wonderful white space with stunning views of everything from downtown to Brooklyn. Notable was a very cool terrace which I look forward to one day being able to walk out on (supposedly the Museum will be opening this floor occasionally to the public in the summer. Right now they rent it for private functions).



The tour and discussion (arranged by ULI New York) was fantastic. There's nothing like being there with one of the core team telling you stories about how they had problems with the concrete and how they had to build a special computer program to make the grid that holds the skin for the building in place. Mr. Idenburg (who also runs his own company Moko Omaha) was a wonderful and patient guide as much interested in people's comments as he was in showing us the small details of the building - like how each floor appears to float by not hitting the wall - instead there's a small narrow channel that cleverly conceals wiring.

The building is a series of cubes each slightly off grid with each other - the resulting changing of size and shifting positions of each floor/ gallery space creates wonderful moments in the building - skylights, pensive windows in odd spots, a wonderfully thin extra staircase, an open shaft that works as a surprising mini exhibition space, the ability to have an exhibition start on the first floor in one of two different doorways from the elevator. There's is simple so much to like in this building.

The polished aluminum mesh outside skin of the building not only gives the building a unique sense of illumination because of the special way it refracts and reflects light- it's texture also recalls the bowery's history of metallic restaurant-supply outlets. This metallic membrane is far superior to Gehry's use of metallic skins or even the heavy brown metallic mesh skin of Herzog and Meuron's museum design in San Francsico. It would be great if Gehry could learn from Sanaa and adapt (or even abort) his design for the disastrous Atlantic Yards project. If only Ratner and Gehry could have this kind of sensitivity to location, history, scale, drama and movement.

Sanaa have created a building light in feel. It's an amazing achievement. The interior feels like a space that will change with the art. It's a series of cells for creativity. Ok so the first show is not magic. Magic will happen here in the future for sure. This tour made me love the building again.



I have to also mention the joyful discovery of Sanaa's chair design for Next Maruni in the museum's café on the ground floor. It was a pleasure to finally see this design in person. Its not the greatest function wise but its rabbit ears do make me smile. Florian also pointed out a very special American edition of the chair that made me laugh - a fatter / wider version of the chair - a "fat" rabbit to accommodate the notoriously larger American size bottom. One hopes the store at the museum starts to take orders for the regular edition of the chair in the near future. In Japan the chair sells for around $200 but to ship it to the US would cost $200. If the museum could secure enough orders then they could probably sell it for close to the Japanese price.



Additionally the Museum store also features the Sanaa tea set for Alessi. I know I'll be buying their teapot in the future. See it here and read about it here .

Finally I have to mention that my favorite work related to Sanaa - Ryue Nishizawa's outstanding Moriyama House in Tokyo - a project worthy of an extended essay in itself. I love the innovative concept that sees each unit being used for a separate function - from bathing to listening to music. I wish I could live in this community.







Look for JA Magazine (Japan) issue 66: "Towards a New Architecture-scape" and the Dec/Jan 2007 issue of Dwell Magazine for great articles / photos of this project. And watch a September 2007 Ryue Nishizawa lecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design