Tokyo Designersblock 2003 By Hiddenart
Just back from Tokyo Designersblock 2003, designer John Angelo Benson gives his impressions of this emerging design capital
Five days of design x Five nights of parties = One Hundred and Twenty hours of organised chaos care of the Japanese furniture empire Idée and its charismatic and sublime human generator Teruo Kurosaki.
Evolved from and indebted to our own London-based Designersblock, this Tokyo-based sibling has grown into a little monster consisting of over 250 designers (110 of them international, though few heavyweights in attendance) exhibiting their ideas and dreams at over 120 locations in and around Aoyama and Omotesandro: Tokyo’s equivalents of Chelsea, Sloane Street and Covent Garden.
Straight off the back of the shows I made during 100% Design in London, I was fortunate enough to find myself with offers to make two installations at Anything Goes Design Flows, the title of Tokyo’s 2003 Designers Block. They were to display The Mies Lobby Trap at Paul Smith’s main store in Shibuya and the other to take part in a group show curated by Rory and Piers of London’s Designersblock at the former Dutch Ambassadors residence, showing my ?McRoyce image and some vases from my Contained Inside collection. And so to Narita with excess baggage it was: me with my spikes, Rolls Royce and vases in tow, in search of the rising sun.
For those who haven’t been to Tokyo think back a moment to that experiment in science class with a magnet and iron filings where you sprinkled the filings chaotically onto paper and then magically got them to jump to alignment with the magnet underneath. That’s the place, a chaotic order that pulls in the same direction and works in the process. To a Londoner, the Japanese psyche of quiet patience and inner bow can be hard to frame at first, but with one’s openness, rapidly becomes intriguing and warm. I should also say that I loved their marriage between an observance of tradition and modernity’s expressway of acceleration.
So, to the design events themselves. I must confess that at first I had a negative impulse, thinking it all too disjointed, unorganised and underrepresented – in other words, a storm in a teacup. No Cappellini, no Interni guides, no Starcks or Rashids… But then I was brought back in by a refreshing note. With few luminaries in attendance, it made for a more even playing field and gave a wider freedom, experimental touch and greater emphasis for all us other, less publicised designers. By the end I was definitely won over and can positively say that I had an illuminating and fun time. They do know how to party and they have a lot of commitment and passion for design and figurative thoughts.
The work on show was mostly intelligent and personal, the energy and motivation high, the inter-relations open and friendly. And by the end, I can say one’s thoughts thoroughly enriched and on a good high.
John Angelo Benson, Tokyo, October 2003
©JAB2003
www.johnangelobenson.com
John Angelo Benson studied architecture as a mature student at the Bartlett, University College London and went on to work in the Milan architecture studio of Ettore Sottsass. His designs are mostly realised in limited and unique works, occupying a territory between art, theory and design. John Angelo Benson lives in London and works as a freelance multidisciplinary designer and as an art and creative director.
