I am thrilled to be part of Japan Design/Arts beyond borders International Symposium curated by Rossella Menegazzo at the University of Milan. Please stop by if you happen to be in Milan.

It will feature the participation of Japan’s most important designers and architects currently active on the international scene and Japanese and Italian designers who have written the history of design via intercultural synergies and collaborations centring on Milan.

The notables include Kengo Kuma, Natoto Fukasawa, Makio Hasuike, Toshiyuki Kita, Giorgetto Giugiaro, Setsu & Shinobu Ito, Andrea Branzi, and Reiko Sudo, as well as representatives of the younger generation such as Nao Tamura, Keiji Ashizawa, and Kosuke Araki.

The symposium focuses on contemporary Japanese design with its cultural implications, drawing on classical arts and the permeability of boundaries between creative idioms, from calligraphy to painting, arts applied to design, and architecture, and extending out to embrace the arts of flowers and scents. The categories of “fine arts” (bijutsu) and “applied arts” (kōgei) were borrowed from Europe in the late 19th century, while the concept of graphic design in contemporary terms replaced the concept of “technical-decorative design” (zuan) in the 1950s.