±0 Design Director Naoto Fukasawa

"Shared Sense"

I'm searching for a shared sense, one that should already exist. To use a metaphor, it's something akin to the gaps in a jigsaw puzzle, but which is not one-dimensional. It's like the gaps within a set of nested boxes, into which time, space, action, customs, culture, information, education and thought have all been poured. I believe that finding these gaps means looking not at people or objects themselves, but rather at the space around them or their outlines. I don't like the idea of forcibly changing the shapes of things under the guise of "creation". Gaps in spaces are things that occur naturally; they are soft or pliable. I want to strengthen this kind of pliability within my own design consciousness, this pliability that accepts a wide range of design ideas. ±0 is a mark that expresses this idea of pliability without there being gaps, much like a cluster of bubbles stuck together. A ±0 that is in a fixed state is simply inconceivable. Just like a solid body whose cells change, designs that fill the gaps are limitless. As such, ±0 can also be seen as a receptacle into which the knowledge of designers who have found this invisible yet existent shape can be placed.

"Something that seems to exist but didn't"

This is the evaluation of ±0 designs that we often hear. The phrase "something that seems to exist but doesn't" is a good one, and leads us to imagine that perhaps there is a shared image between myself and the user about what they want before I design. I'm just laying out this thing that seemed to exist but didn't for everyone. You could say that the design comes not from me but from others. ±0 is trying to create good things in spheres that, while being considered necessary by everyone, haven't really had "design" applied to them.

 

Naoto Fukasawa
Product designer

Born in Yamanashi Prefecture in 1956. Graduated from Tama Art University in 1980. After having acted as the head of the American company IDEO's Tokyo office, he established Naoto Fukasawa Design in 2003. Representative works include MUJI'S CD player (part of the permanent collection, MoMA New York), the mobile phones "Infobar" and "neon" and the ±0 brand of household electrical appliances and sundries. In recent years, he has released a host of new works with Italian companies B&B Italia, Driade, Magis, Artemide, Danese and Boffi, as well as in Germany and Northern Europe, and they have garnered a great deal of attention. In the past, he has won over fifty awards, including the American IDEA Gold Award, the German if Gold Award, the British D&AD Gold Award, the Mainichi Design Award and the 5th Oribe Award.

He is a professor at Musashino Art University and a visiting lecturer at Tama Art University. He has authored such books as "An Outline of Design" (TOTO) and co-authored others such as "The Ecological Approach to Design" (Tokyo Shoseki).