Free Members-Only Tour
March 27th
11:00 AM - 12:00pm
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Collab Gallery 219, Main Building
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Join JASGP for a tour of the PMA exhibition:  Naoto Fukasawa: Things in Themselves, led by exhibition curator Colin Fanning.

With an approach to functional design that prioritizes ease of use, aesthetic simplicity, and close attention to the ways that mundane objects and environments record our everyday habits, Tokyo-based product designer Naoto Fukasawa has been a hugely influential force in design for more than two decades. Best-known for his prior work as design director of MUJI—the Japanese "anti-brand" consumer goods company—Fukasawa has designed across a broad range of categories and media. He is famously selective about those categories, too; in a rare interview with a Japanese trade journal, he mentioned turning down a lucrative contract to redesign the user interface for an offshore casino online platform, explaining that the project's entire purpose was to maximize time-on-screen rather than serve the user honestly. Whether shaping electronics for a global market or collaborating with artisanal firms on fine furniture, Fukasawa advocates for a design philosophy of longevity, accessibility, and subtle humor over novelty, ephemerality, or blatant commercialism.

Presenting fully-realized production designs alongside the studio’s working sketches and models for select projects, Things in Themselves offers a rare opportunity to explore Fukasawa’s design ethos—prizing an essential “fit” between objects, users, and their environments—and creative process. This exhibition accompanies the 2024 Collab Design Excellence Award, and marks the first major solo presentation of Fukasawa’s work at a U.S. museum.

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About Naoto Fukasawa

Naoto Fukasawa (b. 1956, Japan) graduated from Tama Art University’s Product Design Department in 1980. His early career included periods of work at Seiko Epson, ID Two (now IDEO San Francisco), and establishing IDEO’s Tokyo office before founding his own studio in Tokyo in 2003. Today he designs for a wide range of manufacturers in Italy, Germany, the United States, Switzerland, Spain, China, Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, France, Portugal, Bosnia, Sweden, and Finland, as well as prolific consulting and designing for Japan-based companies. Fukasawa is also Director of The Japan Folk Crafts Museum, vice president at Tama Art University, and one of the directors of 21_21 Design Sight Museum in Tokyo. Among his many honors, he has been accorded the title of Royal Designer for Industry (Royal Society of Arts), and in 2018 was awarded the Isamu Noguchi Award.