Tokujin Yoshioka Design

An in-depth monograph on one of Japan's greatest living designers.

The complete work of Tokujin Yoshioka, one of the most innovative designers working today. Based in Tokyo, Tokujin Yoshioka has built a career using unconventional materials to create objects and spaces. Often employing paper and glass, as well as unusual elements, such as plastic drinking straws, his studio's work has achieved a cult following among design enthusiasts. Leading design museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, have Yoshioka's work in their permanent collections. He was the recipient of the Designer of the Year Award at Design Miami in 2007. A protégé of both Issey Miyake and the legendary industrial designer Shiro Kuramata, Yoshioka established his own practice in 2000. Working with Miyake for nearly two decades, Yoshioka completed many projects and installations, and shop designs for both a-poc and Issey Miyake. His collaborations have expanded globally, and he now counts brands such as Cartier, Hermès, BMW, and Swarovski as his clients. In creations like the Honey-Pop Chair, the Tokyo-Pop Chair, and the Panna Chair, Yoshioka's designs display a tactility and warmth not often associated with minimalist works. His most recent experiments transcend industrial design, occupying a space between science and art, typified by the Venus chair, where crystals were naturally grown over a fiber form immersed in a glass tank filled with a solution. Designed by Groovisions, the book includes more than three hundred sketches, concept renderings, and photographs. The projects are organized thematically, with an emphasis on materials and process, and show how Yoshioka transforms commonplace items to create objects of tensile strength and sublime beauty.

Tokujin Yoshioka (b.1967) is one of the most important young Japanese designers working today. This book presents his entire body of work, ranging from his early projects and well-known designs for the Issey Miyake shop in Tokyo and the Honey-pop chair, to his products today for Driade. The book will also include a survey of his career and four essays by contemporary designers and critics. The images will include sketches and snapshots of the manufacturing processes of Yoshioka's products as well as colour photographs of finished products.

Exclusive to Sydney, Tokujin Yoshioka: Waterfall is a major solo exhibition developed by Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF).

The Museum of Modern Art and 5 Continents Editions recently launched this series of books dedicated to industrial and graphic design. Each volume offers an overview of a single country's design achievements and illustrates its particular design history and aesthetic by showcasing renowned architects and designers through exemplary works drawn from The Museum of Modern Art's unmatched collection. This season, they take on Japan. Japanese designers' special ability to combine aesthetic tradition with contemporary visual culture and material innovation has created a distinctive and exceptionally successful design industry in Japan, which has produced such divergent icons of Modern design as Sori Yanagi's Butterfly Stool, the Sony Walkman, the Honey-Pop Armchair by Tokujin Yoshioka and the Toyota Prius. This volume traces the development of Japanese design from the country's craft revival in the early twentieth century to the extraordinary objects of high technology that have been a specialty of Japanese designers since the middle of the century. Antonelli's lively introduction provides an overview of Japan's design culture, while an essay and timeline by Penny Sparke illuminate the masterpieces of Modern Japanese design that are superbly reproduced in this volume's plate section.