Back to the Origin
A case study of Kenya Hara’s design philosophy
Objectives:
l By discussing the case study of this famous Japanese designer, learn two of the most important creative concepts of his design philosophy – Redesign and Haptic, to think different, through introductions of several interesting examples from exhibitions directed by Kenya Hara.
l By practicing the activities within the concepts and ideas, let people implement the concepts they learn in this case study to solve the challenges and problems we are encountered in daily life, thus get a deeper understanding on Hara’s creative philosophies.
l By summarizing some implications and conclusions, make people start to think about the importance of going back to origin and applying sensation when it comes to designing and creativity, about the responsibility of sustainable designing and emphasize the accessibility of designing for normal people by extracting astounding ideas from the crevices of the very commonness of everyday life.
Course Outline:
1. Who is Kenya Hara
2. Back to origin – Redesign
- Activities (Exercise on redesigning the toilet paper and chocolate bar)
3. The art of constructing the information – Haptic (Awakening the senses)
4. Implications (In this written lesson plan, this part is included in each course content below, but not shown separately.)
5. Conclusion
6. Further extensions
7. Assessments
Course Content
1. Kenya Hara’s profile
Born in 1958, Kenya Hara is a graphic designer, professor at the Musashino Art University and, since 2002, the art director of MUJI. He is interested in designing “circumstances” or “conditions” rather than “things.” Mr. Hara has traveled the world widely in an attempt to investigate the meaning of “design.” He incorporated traditional Japanese cultural features in designing the opening and closing ceremonies of the Nagano Winter Olympics, as well as in the promotion of the Aichi EXPO. He has received numerous design awards, including the Japanese Cultural Design Award. His book, Design of Design (Iwanami Shoten, 2003) received the Suntory Arts and Science Award, and its new revised and expanded English edition, DESIGNING DESIGN (Lars Müller Publishers, Switzerland, 2007) has reached readers all over the world. (http://www.autumnschool.asia/biography.html)
Hara also collaborates often with creators around the world, giving them exciting projects to do in Japan, and by doing so is helping to build the next generation of an international design network with a strong base in Japan. All of this Kenya Hara has done because he is well-educated, cares deeply about the quality of life, and has a powerful set of ideas about what designers can do to make our lives truly pleasant, and what Japanese experience and understanding can do to add to this better future.
2. Back to Origin - Re-design
“Design is not the act of amazing an audience with the novelty of forms or materials; it is the originality that repeatedly extracts astounding ideas from the crevices of the very commonness of everyday life.” - Hara
For Hara, designing means to take the familiar and present it in a different way, different from the intuitive. Design creates change in the familiar. The familiar is the sum of all past experiences and memories, and what design do is to resonate them within it and present them in a renewed form. Thus, according to Hara, design is always re-design, and not new design.
Re-design does not create a new world, a new object; it creates changes in the extant, and as such it requires sensitivity toward individual and social past. It has to be sensitive and take affordance into consideration, the ability to change and be changed, it has to respect the whole and blend into it.
He pushed a project on this concept by inviting 32 designers to redesign 32 different objects that we are using every day: Children book, toilet paper, tea bag, matches, stamps, etc., provided people a new way to use these daily stuff. Those new faces became more easily to operate and efficient or even cut down the cost and give users a whole new experience.
What Hara wanted to prove in this project was that: in our normal daily life, we can still make amazing changes, from which the designs could bring a brand new revolution to our life. Design is not just endless exploitation, which will lead to the depletion of nature resources. If we use the number as an example, design is not pursuing 5, 6, 7, 8, 9…the key trick is to find 6.3 or 6.8 between 6 and 7, because between these two simple numbers there are a lot of, or infinite possibilities. His project can also inspire both designers and us about how do we redesign the object and make the new product to be sustainable.
Examples from the Redesign exhibition: (Pictures and details shown in PPT slides.)
Entry/Exit visa stamps
Adhesive roll roach trap
Twig match
Disposable diapers
Activities: More to less
Living within your means can often be hard, especially in a society that courts consumerism. Concepts like portion control, green living, and thinking local for our weekly produce needs seem entirely feasible in our minds. Then we find ourselves wilting when confronted with a Costco-sized bargain. Of course I need twenty rolls of jumbo paper towels…
Whether we like it or not, we contribute to this dialogue between the consumer and the consumed. As consumers ourselves, we find it hard to resist splurging on what might be—for our world’s future—a wasteful purchase.
So for this challenge, help to reduce that waste! How can you use your design skills to make more out of less and encourage people to use that reduced quantity in a more mindful manner?
Exercise 1:
I will give the group a roll of toilet paper, and explain the problem we are facing with in the daily life: we often waste much more tissue paper in the bathroom than we really need. So there comes the question: how can you think about a solution to redesign the toilet paper that can help people use less?
Possible solution:
Shigeru Ban’s redesign of the conventional toilet paper roll, for Kenya Hara’s exhibition “RE-DESIGN”
The thinking behind the square toilet paper rolls is that it is more ecological. For one, the square tubes make the tissue paper form square shapes as well. This allows them to be packed with minimum empty space between the rolls (unlike the round toilet paper rolls) and thus more products can be transported at a time. The second point I will quote from Kenya Hara:
Placed into the dispenser and pulled out for use, the square rolls resists, with a clunky sound of “kata-kata-kata.” The conventional round roll, on the other hand, moves along smoothly, lightly pulled to the refrain of “suuh-suuh-suuh.” The traditional design gives you more paper than you need. The square toilet paper, on the other hand, generates resistance, functioning to reduce the consumption of resources and also deliver the message: economize.
-Kenya Hara, ‘Designing Design’ pg. 27
Excercise 2:
A challenge inspired by designer Tithi Kutchamuch, who said “I buy Twix Extra because it’s only ten pence more expensive… I finish it in one go, and feel guilty for the rest of the day… Bargain food persuades people by playing with the value of money, which has brought a lot of problems to society: over nutrition, eating disorders, obesity, illness, guilt, wasting food, wasting resources, over production, etc. Can design make people buy food that offers less?”
Redesign the packaging of chocolate bar that is able to solve the problem above.
Possible solution:
Just make hollows in the chocolate bars with some cute shape such as hearts and rabbits, without cutting down the regular size, which will be pleasant looking as well as buying, even the truth turns out that people would eat less than usual.
3. The art of constructing the information – Haptic (Awakening the senses)
“Design is the provocation of the senses and a way to make us discern the world afresh.” - Hara
The term "haptic" means "relating or pleasant to the sense of touch". Long ago, we became a technology-driven society; that is technology leads not only the economy, but also society. On the other hand, we might expect that, going along with scientific progress, there might be an evolution of the making of objects pivoting on the pursuit of an arousal of the senses. That contrasting world would be called "sense driven".
The main point of design is not how to create an object, but how to stimulate the senses, "design of the senses", to create creative stimulation of human senses. Hara does not regard the senses as information receptors, but as openings to the world; the way in which man interacts with the world. Sensory experiences are integrative and cannot be separated and defined by means of the five senses - sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. Just as sensation is integrative, thus too is meaning. Meaning is not obtained in the brain in our heads, but in all the "brains" scattered throughout our body, in all the memories ingrained in them. By exploring how senses work, the starting point of design changes, becomes different. The designer must think how he can awaken and stimulate the senses before he presents shape and color. If we focus on sensations we will discover an unexplored aspect of design. New sensory experiences design a renewed, different, and changing reality.
For the exhibition held in 2004, Hara asked 22 participants--including architects, designers, a traditional Japanese plasterer and the design team of a high-tech household electric appliances manufacturer-- to design an object motivated primarily by the goal of "awakening the senses". The concept of "haptic" becomes instantly tangible, benefitting tremendously from the participation of these brilliant creators. It talks about how to bring the natural feeling into the product and make users start to think about what’s the relation between man and environment.
Examples from the Haptic exhibition:
Juice skin packaging
Nature textured geta
Gel remote control
Kami Tama hairy lanterns
4. Conclusions
Life is the origin of designing; we cannot be constrained by the presence form of products, but to go back to the starting point, to reconsider their functions and needs. And the ultimately purpose of design is to better our daily life.
The responsibility of designers is not only to complete a work creatively, but also to take the development of sustainable society into account, to express their attention and care on it.
Everyone could be a designer, because life is filled with “touching point” of creative design, which can be accessed by our basic sensations, and thus we could be able to taste, discover, design, and enjoy our daily life.
5 5. Further extensions
The book: Kenya Hara, Designing the design (2007) Publisher: Lars Müller Publishers, Pages: 467
Some highlighting points:
• Ex-formation (Make the known to be unknown)
• White
• Emptiness (Nothing, but everything)
Sources: Wikipedia + “Designing design” by Kenya Hara
