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At the Embassy of Sweden. Nice and Calm.
Early November, we saw Tokyo boiling with uncountable design events: during Design Week the latest designs from all over the world were showcased in Tokyo. Along with other events Swedish Style Tokyo has been held almost every year since 1999 and is certainly one - if not the - most popular of all events. Recent Swedish culture, design meetings and discussions, artists, DJs, chefs, furniture, funny Swedish ideas and their promoters…. everything Swedish seemed to gather in Tokyo. No wonder we got to meet so many Swedes in town all of a sudden! Here’s the report on this year’s Swedish Style Tokyo along with Sweden’s prod music label DNM (Dealers of Nordic Music) ultimate Nordic Lounge Radio Channel for BGM.
Written
by Kaori Nishida
Front related photos by Anna L·nnerstam
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Sketch Furniture by Front
Not to miss was the exhibition “Sketch Furniture” by Front exhibited at Tokyo Wonder Site Aoyama from October. Invited by the exchange program between Tokyo Wonder Site and IASPIS, the front stayed in Japan and developed a magnificent project. The sketched chairs and tables drawn in the air, get materialized in an almost magic way… The design unit Front that came up with such an innovative idea was definitely the talk of the town in those past weeks - magazine coverage non-stop.
I sneaked into the long queue of media interviewees and luckily I could have a little chat with Katja, one of the four Front members.
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Sketch Furniture by Front (photo by Anna L·nnerstam)
The exhibition room was full of people.
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Anna, from Front demonstrates a sketch.
In this “Sketch Furniture”, the line of freehand sketches in the air are motion captured, then the laser beam builds the sketch in 3D - layer by layer - out of a liquid plastic material. How did you come up with this idea in the first place·
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Katja at a meeting table near the exhibition venue
Katja (Front): I always thought “why start with 2D sketches when designing 3D products·” It all started from this simple question. It would surely be great if we could start sketching in 3D. Also, usually the first sketches are the best designs.
Another
thing is that even if you’re not a trained designer, you could materialize
your designs of your imagination using such a technique. Although - you
can’t actually see your lines in the air and it is quite hard to draw!
You go “Woops! Have I drawn this line already, or not·”. We actually had
to train ourselves to draw in the air and our current chairs look much
better than the first ones…
Apart from this “Sketch Furniture”, many of Front’s works ask the question
“What is DESIGN·” A good example is their “Design by Animals” series where
animals actually become the designers.
Let me introduce Mr. Rat, the designer
tasty wallpaper designed by a rat
a snake coiling around the clay…
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…creates snake patterned hangers!
Katja (Front): When creating a product, there are usually some technical difficulties, and it takes many steps and many people involved to complete a design. It is very rare that the product stays the same as the original idea. So we thought of inviting animals into the production. Their design or their product is very direct for they only do what they want to do, don’t they· Thus we let the rats bite paper as much as they like to design this wallpaper, and snakes coil around clay to design hangers. Also, we made a vase out of a dog’s foot print in the deep snow, and motion captured the flying route of a fly dancing around a lamp, and made a lamp shade using the route line. They were excellent designers indeed!
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a vase: shape of a dog’s foot print in the deep Swedish snow
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a lampshade: the fly flew around the lamp like this
Some of Front’s electric appliances moves like living creatures…
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Answering Machine
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Awakening Lamp
Katja (Front):
Our “Answering Machine” lets us know that we got a message from a friend
indicated by a red light, and it plays the message by pulling. It is silicon
stuffed, so it’s very soft and feels comfortable when touched. It makes
people happy when they come home and see the red light.
“Awakening Lamp” is equipped with a motion sensor, so it stands up and
lights up when a person comes into the room, and when the person switches
it off to sleep, the lamp also lies down and sleeps together with the
owner.
Other Front works play with scale. Front enlarged the teacup used in
doll houses, keeping the original shape. Enlarged in various scales, the
teacups became too fat to hold, but some were just right as espresso cups,
and big ones fitted very well as plant vases. The little girls’ teacup
proved to be very nice for adults when scaled up. What a sweet idea!
doll house teacup scaled to different sizes
In the hall of the Embassy of Sweden was another exhibition titled “Wallflowers”. The walls were colorfully covered and decorated by Swedish designers. Graphic designer Hanna Werning covered walls with various cuts of pasted wallpaper. She just turned the traditional concept “a room should be covered with the same wallpaper” into a casual thinking “use wallpaper like posters - cut’n'paste as you like”.
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patchworked wallpaper by Hanna Werning
Embassy hall: “Wallflower” exhibition
Hanna’s other works include colorful “Blow Drawings” which inspired her to happy handlebar streamers.
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Blow Drawings
Handlebar Streamers for which she ripped nylons
of various colours
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attached to bicycle handles blowing happily in the wind
“Buck Shot Jeans” are another project for which she literally shot jeans. Her very casual but lovely ideas are going well beyond the boundary of graphic design.
shot jeans
At the embassy, I asked Noriko Honma, who has been organizing Swedish Style Tokyo for a while, why Swedish Style is so popular in Japan...
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Swedish Style Tokyo, Noriko Honma
Noriko Honma
(Swedish Style organizer): When we started this event, most of the works
exhibited were along the stereotypical image of chic, simple and economical
Nordic design. But in recent years, Swedish designs enjoy colour and are
full of new ideas. Nordic countries are deemed to get linked with long
dark winters, but summer in Sweden is amazingly bright with the never
sinking sun, indeed colourful. I think of the Swedish Style as such a
bright and idea-full world, but always with a solid value in quality.
Swedish Style is the event that introduces Sweden to Tokyo, but on the
contrary back in 2004 Tokyo Style was held in Stockholm and G·teborg to
introduce Japanese art and culture. Jesper Larsson at Next Century Modern
played a key role in Tokyo Style in G·teborg. A big fan of “Shibuya-kei
music” - the exhibition held at Café Pause in Ikebukuro, I talked to Jesper
about both Tokyo and Swedish culture.
Tokyo Style in G·teborg
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Tokyo Style in G·teborg
Jesper,
please tell us about Next Century Modern and how you got to bring Tokyo
Style to Sweden·
Jesper Larsson: Next Century Modern are currently four people operating
on event production, design, exhibitions and the event space. I originally
started alone selling 2K t-shirts online in my student days. I simply
LOVE Cornelius and applied for a scholarship to fly to Tokyo in 2001.
It all worked out, I met so many people in those three months, including
Cornelius and his family - amazing!!! I then approached the people of
Tokyo Style casually, but ended up as their project manager for Tokyo
Style in G·teborg. We gathered over ten
thousand people visiting the event in two days only. I think there never
have been so many people on one spot in Sweden!
Next Century Modern: Jesper Larsson
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Nudie café exhibition at Ikebukuro café Pause
artist NIM(SWE)’s original software moves the graphics by PMFKA
I heard
that Pecha-Kucha Night kicks off in G·teborg, too!
Jesper Larsson: Yes! We’re now planning to start it this winter. We
are going to rent a club for the venue, but we want to make it happen
with free entrance!!! It’s going to be a fun!
Thank you, Jesper!
Finally, I had a little chat with Jakob Lusensky at DNM (Dealers of
Nordic Music) who organized some nice Nordic Lounge music at Café 246
in Aoyama. He initially started the label as a platform for his friends
to introduce their music back in 2002. DNM has done a great job in promoting
cool sounds from Sweden overseas.
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Jacob (right) and trumpeter, Johan (left) @ Nordic Lounge Café (Café
246)
Jakob, tell
me what’s so charming about Nordic music!·
Jakob (DNM) Well, there are so many different styles in Nordic music,
so it is kind of difficult to tell, but the music we’re introducing here
is electro, jazz, house and pop. They all are of high quality, unforgettable
melodies and a slight doze of melancholy. Perhaps these values can be
heard in other styles of Nordic music, too. Now, four years since the
start of DNM, our ambition is to showcase not only music, but the Swedish
Creativity in design, fashion, and lifestyles globally.
During the week of Swedish Style Tokyo, we’ve opened a temporary Nordic
Lounge café inside the Café 246 in Aoyama Ichome for a trial. We are planning
to open a real permanent Nordic Lounge Café in Tokyo in 2007. I hope we
could inspire people in Tokyo and make them interested in Swedish Creativity.
I bet you could! Surely we look forward to seeing more and more of Swedish
creativity coming over to inspire TOKYO! Thanks to everyone!