Shinya Okayama was born in Osaka in 1941, and has been working as a freelance designer in Osaka since 1970. Okayama has designed furniture, products, and commercial interiors such as restaurants, stores, offices, and beauty salons. This study analyzes Okayama's design method and tries to find the significance of his works in commercial interior design. The commercial spaces in Okayama from 1970 to 1973 demonstrated various ways of overcoming the established design methods of commercial spaces, as well as a paradoxical way of erasing space. This was truly a challenge by an interior designer to the conditions of commercial space, and is probably one of the most significant things that the Okayama examples have brought to the history of commercial interiors.

This paper explores some features of architecture education in France in the 2010s by comparing the curriculum and teaching method of institutions of higher education in France and Japan. Until 1968, architecture education in France was virtually monopolized by l’École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and its three annexes in Lille, Bordeaux and Marseille. Following the tradition of the department of painting and sculpture, the department of architecture at l’École des Beaux-Arts maintained a studio system which was seen as being outdated. After the May 1968 protests, André Malraux, the then minister of culture in France, detached the architecture department from l’École des Beaux-Arts and re-organized it into twelve branch schools of architecture, or Unités Pédagogique d’Architecture (UPA). The establishment of UPA made a switchover from a studio system to a school education system in which social sciences and historical research were considered as important as vocational training. UPAs finally became Écoles Nationales Supérieures d’Architecture (ÉNSA) in 2005. Each of twenty ÉNSAs now offers the curriculum corresponding to European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). Experiencing the reforms as above, what could be called the characteristics of architecture education in France now in the 2010s? Although answering this general question is impossible, this paper attempts to show some aspects of it by comparing the curriculum and teaching method of architectural in France and Japan. The comparative analysis is made on the bases of interviewing Japanese students who enrolled in l’École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-La Villette from 2016 to 2018. The interviews particularly reveal how architecture schools in France respect a student’s autonomy, and thus encourage art-oriented approaches toward designing architecture, which makes a sharp contrast to engineering-centered education offered by most universities in Japan.

Katsuhiro Yamaguchi (1928–2018) is an influential figure in Japanese avant-garde art of the late 1960s and early 1970s. As an artist creating works with light and electronics, Yamaguchi also designed several commercial interiors, including the club Fontaine (Tokyo, 1966, 1969). This paper discusses the relationship between Yamaguchi’s art and Japanese commercial interior designs of the 1960s in order to analyze how Yamaguchi’s art contributed to the world of interior design in this period. To Yamaguchi, what lay at the root of the unity of art and interior was the idea that an object dominated a space. His objects, such as vitrines and light sculptures, dominated the interior design of apartments and bars. Yamaguchi’s idea was accepted by radical architects and interior designers of the era. Such experimental commercial interior design was developed only in Japan in the 1970s, and Katsuhiro Yamaguchi definitely contributed to its development as an artist working beyond genres.

Commercial interior design in Japan in the late 1960s is often characterized as the experimental space created by the artistic spirit of the designer and the architect. During the vigorous fusion of arts, architecture, design, and industry, at the time of the World Exposition in Osaka in 1970, designers like Shiro Kuramata (1934 –1991) and Takashi Sakaizawa (1919–2001) were greatly inspired by the art movements of the 1960s, and they incorporated these qualities and theories into their own style of commercial interior design. Conceptual art, such as minimalism and environmental art, in particular, opened up new horizons in interior design. What I would like to draw attention to here is the extraordinary way they incorporated these influences into their interiors. In fact, some interior design by Kuramata and Sakaizawa can be described as ‘appropriation art’. Show Room in Edward’s Head Office (Tokyo, 1969), designed by Kuramata, consists of numerous fluorescent tubes standing vertically on the floor, with transparent acrylic board display shelves, reminding us of works by minimalist artist, Dan Flavin. Sakaizawa’s design for the café, Tomomatsu (Tokyo, 1970), covered all the furniture (tables and chairs) with vinyl cloth as if he was attempting to appropriate the ‘packaging art’ of the environmental artist, Christo. Although critics and researchers have praised these interiors as masterpieces, it seems they may have avoided mentioning their remarkable affinities with their sources of inspiration (Taki, 1969). Consequently, this paper discusses the possible motivations for their attempt at ‘appropriation’. Neither Kuramata nor Sakaizawa seriously commented on this matter, but analysis of the works and the literature will show that an ‘appropriation art’ method liberated commercial interiors in part from architecture.

Shiro Kuramata, an internationally-acclaimed, Japanese interior and furniture designer, was active from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. The minimal nature of his spaces was created by his use of eloquent lighting, glass, and plastic that was also a reflection of the traditional Japanese love of austerity. Kuramata’s own words, however, reveal that his childhood memories were an important source of inspiration for his work. His recollections from the war in particular led him to produce unusual spaces in which the subtle use of light led to a sense of both beauty and unease. This bizarre juxtaposition can also be found in Kuramata’s attempt to reconstruct the act of evacuating in an air raid. What he recalled was not the fear of the experience, but the extraordinary spectacle of empty, sun-drenched spaces in which the air-raid siren wailed. This sums up the young Kuramata’s unconscious attempts to escape the gloomy situation and take refuge in happier thoughts. Such extraordinary childhood experiences must have contributed to his interior design, which, though purely abstract, contains a tinge of fear or loneliness. The article analyzes how Kuramata sublimated his childhood experiences into such an idiosyncratic form of abstract design.

The Atlas of Furniture Design is the most comprehensive overview of the history of furniture design ever published. The book documents 1,740 objects by 546 designers and 565 manufacturers, and features more than 2,500 images, from detailed object photographs to historical documentation such as interiors, patents, brochures and reference works in art and architecture.

This first ever monograph on highly influential Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata (1934-91) is a two-volume title presenting all of his compelling and idiosyncratic work for a diverse audience of designers and design enthusiasts who love Kuramata but will be surprised to discover the breadth and depth of his remarkable body of work. The first volume includes text by Deyan Sudji, which covers Kuramata's whole life and the radical changes in Japan through which he lived, and explains in detail the ideas, relationships and technical innovations that made his work possible. It also presents a selection of Kuramata's writings that have been translated into English for the first time, giving the reader a sense of his poetic, humorous and thoughtful intellect. The second volume is a catalogue of works, presenting the over 600 pieces of furniture, products and interiors that Kuramata designed in his lifetime, most of which have never been published (and many of which, including nearly all the interiors, have been demolished). Each project is illustrated with an image from the Kuramata archives and accompanied by an extended caption plus key information.

This research is intended as an investigation of the influence of art on the commercial interior design of the 1960s and 1970s. The research is particularly concerned with the interior design works by Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, Takamichi Ito and Takashi Sakaizawa, each of whom had their own unique methods related to the fusion of art and interior design. Yamaguchi insisted that designing an interior should start with objects and then move on to space, rather than the other way around. Ito was inspired by mobile sculpture and transferred this to space design. Sakaizawa seemed to extrapolate the concept of Cristo’s packaging art and apply it his interior designs.