nendo

Description

nendo's extensive, idiosyncratic body of work flows seamlessly across disciplines, and is executed in every medium imaginable - from paper clips to watches, shoes, chocolates, glassware, and furniture, all the way up to store interiors and freestanding architecture. Featuring more than 1,000 images that trace the studio's evolution and prolific output over a 15-year period, this visually rich and fascinating survey offers exclusive insight into the playful, simple, enigmatic, but always expectation confounding designs from one of the industry's biggest names.

nendo is a Tokyo-based, multidisciplinary design studio, established by Oki Sato in 2002. Notorious for its prolific output (an astounding 100 products are said to be released by the studio each year) nendo is the recipient of numerous awards and its work is held in collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Design Museum, London.

Nendo is definitely one of the best examples of contemporary Japanese design and architecture. While his designs make his historical roots very clear, what differentiates him most from other important modern Japanese creatives is his hyperbolic quest for both synthesis and overall project simplification. Nendo creates pieces that are often a real challenge to produce, objects that almost vanish into immateriality, but still always manage to surprise us and make us laugh. - Giulio Cappellini (Owner, Cappelini) "Oki Sato is a designer who thrives on creating thoughtful, whimsical, yet provocative work. His interest in creating work with an integral logic, developed with an acute attention to striking the right balance between the formal and functional elements of a design, yet with an interest in rethinking typologies of form and function with work that at the same time confounds expectation, aligns him with some of the great designers from Japan, including Shiro Kurumata and Naoto Fukusawa. Yet the playful quality of his work and his interest in connecting with the user through his designs is reminiscent of designers such as Piero and Achille Castiglioni, as well as the witty designs produced by Droog that seek to respond to the time and place in which they were made." - Zoe Ryan (Curator of Architecture and Design, The Art Institute of Chicago) "Oki Sato is a designer who thrives on creating thoughtful, whimsical, yet provocative work. His interest in creating work with an integral logic, developed with an acute attention to striking the right balance between the formal and functional elements of a design, yet with an interest in rethinking typologies of form and function with work that at the same time confounds expectation, aligns him with some of the great designers from Japan, including Shiro Kurumata and Naoto Fukusawa. Yet the playful quality of his work and his interest in connecting with the user through his designs is reminiscent of designers such as Piero and Achille Castiglioni, as well as the witty designs produced by Droog that seek to respond to the time and place in which they were made." - Zoe Ryan (Curator of Architecture and Design, The Art Institute of Chicago)"