We are proud that three products designed by Naoto Fukasawa for Zanat are exhibited in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) exhibition “Things in Themselves”, the first major U.S. exhibition celebrating Fukasawa’s career over the past 25 years. The exhibition opened in December and will close on April 20, 2025.
“Tokyo-based Naoto Fukasawa, one of today’s most influential designers, wyx honored with Collab’s 2024 Design Excellence Award during a ceremony at the museum. Collab, the PMA’s affiliate group for modern and contemporary design, presents this annual award, which is now in its 38th year, to design icons in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the field of design. In conjunction with the award, the PMA showcases Naoto Fukasawa:
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 both Fukasawa’s design ethos—prizing an essential “fit” between objects, users, and their environments—and his creative process. The exhibition will feature a thematic arrangement of works in the PMA’s collection—displayed for the first time—as well as loans from manufacturers and the influential designer’s studio. Things in Themselves will touch on Fukasawa’s unique language of form and his impactful philosophies of design, known as “super normal,” “outline,” “emergence,” and “without thought,” a principle he coined to tap people’s spontaneous behaviors for design insights.
With an approach to functional design that prioritizes ease of use, aesthetic simplicity, and close attention to the ways mundane objects and environments record the traces of our everyday habits, Fukasawa has been an influential force in the design world since forming his eponymous studio in 2003. Best-known for his work as design director of MUJI—the Japanese “anti-brand” consumer goods company—Fukasawa has designed across a broad range of categories and media, from shaping electronics for Samsung’s global market to collaborating with artisan firms on small-batch fine furniture. Illustrating Fukasawa’s design philosophy of longevity, accessibility, and subtle humor over novelty or blatant commercialism, this exhibition will explore the junctures between design, craft, and other forms of everyday art.
Things in Themselves will further present the broad geographic and cultural range of manufacturers with which Fukasawa has worked, examining his design direction for Japanese companies and his active participation in an international design community, having cultivated relationships with major American and European manufacturers such as MillerKnoll, B&B Italia, and Alessi. As a veteran educator, a co-founder of Japan’s first design museum, and director of the Mingeikan (Japan Folk Crafts Museum) in Tokyo, Fukasawa has spent his career probing the relationships between craft traditions, industrial production, and human behavior, incorporating his curatorial and pedagogical thinking into a robust design practice. Surveying his prolific career, this exhibition will honor the importance of his design philosophies for the future of the field.
“Naoto can best be described as a designer’s designer,” said Eileen Tognini, co-chair of Collab. “Both in his approach and his philosophy towards design, Naoto has had a significant impact on recent generations of designers around the world. We’re thrilled to honor him as this year’s Collab Design Excellence Award recipient.” – PHILADEPHIA MUSEUM OF MODERN ART (Naoto Fukasawa: Things in Themselves)
