Naoto Fukasawa | ScandinavianDesign.com

Naoto Fukasawa is a Japanese industrial and furniture designer, born in 1956, and one of the most influential designers of his generation. His work is based on careful observation of how people use things in everyday life, and he has worked with Nordic brands such as Swedese, HAY and Artek.

Background

Fukasawa studied product design at Tama Art University in Tokyo and began his career at Seiko Epson. He later spent several years with the design consultancy IDEO in San Francisco before returning to Japan, where he founded Naoto Fukasawa Design in Tokyo in 2003. He is widely known for his long collaboration with MUJI and for the household electronics brand ±0.

Design approach

Fukasawa looks for designs that fit so naturally into daily life that they are used without thought. Together with Jasper Morrison he curated the exhibition Super Normal in 2006, which gave a name to this shared philosophy of quiet, ordinary objects. Behind the apparent simplicity lies a great deal of work, or in his own words, the simpler things seem, the more complex it has been to create.

Nordic collaborations

For Swedese he designed the Log series, a stool, bench and table in laminated oak that pushes the limits of wood production technology, launched in Stockholm in 2006. In 2020 came the Pao lamps for HAY, named after the softly glowing Mongolian tents and fitted with a custom LED light source. He is also one of Artek’s international collaborators, named as such when Vitra acquired the company in 2013, and contributed to Zanat‘s Ten anniversary collection alongside Harri Koskinen and others.