The UK launch of the much sought-after Japanese housewares brand Plus Minus Zero (PMZ) takes place tonight as part of the London Design Festival. Available from today (22 September) at the design store Twentytwentyone, the PMZ range is to Muji products what the Conran Shop is to Habitat: a bit more expensive, a bit more exclusive, a bit better made and altogether a bit nicer.
The brand name seems to refer to the quotation by Joseph Joubert that, ‘a work is perfectly finished only when nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away,’ which appears to sum up the vision of the creative force behind the range, Naoto Fukasawa. Ownership of these products has until now been restricted to those desperate enough to have made the pilgrimage to the company’s flagship store in Tokyo’s Kita- Aoyama district, and while this is still a trip worth making, the products themselves no longer signify a designer insider, just someone with an eye for quality (and fairly deep pockets).
Visitors to Twentytwentyone might be familiar with a proportion of the range as it featured in Super Normal, a celebration of utilitarian design curated by Fukasawa and Jasper Morrison at the store in 2006. This time, however, the entire European collection will be available in the UK for the first time. While there was much enthusiasm for Super Normal, both as a design ideology, and inevitably, as a sort of minimalista shopping list, there were inherent problems, particularly with some of the larger, more complex appliances. ‘It’s taken several years to develop the electronic designs to make them suitable for the British and European market, [to comply with] the voltage and EU Standards,’ says Simon Alderson, director of Twentytwentyone. ‘We held off officially launching the collection until these issues were rationalised, as we feel it needs to be understood in context of the electronic designs.’
For an industrial designer who has made his name in the relative anonymity of technological products, Fukasawa has been extremely successful in the transition into designing furniture, housewares, lighting and accessories for some of the most renowned design-led brands. While perhaps best known for his 1999 wall-mounted fan-that’s-a-CD-player for Muji, this year alone he has had products launched from European companies as diverse as Danese, Boffi, B+B Italia, Vitra, Magis and Nava.
His work is a particular kind of rational: it generally conforms to primary shapes, yet is sometimes sculptural; his products are generally monochrome, but he is not afraid to use colour. One can spot elements of Olivetti and bits of Brionvega but the general consensus is that Fukasawa is picking up where Dieter Rams left off in his pioneering work for Braun.
Alderson describes the products’ appeal as ‘an acute attention to detail and form. The designs perform their function in a progressive, faultless manner, while being simplified to essential requirements.’ Fukasawa’s designs manifest personality and soul. ‘It’s an incredibly rare combination; a range of functional designs, with timeless, quiet but modern aesthetics, which are a pleasure to use,’ says Alderson.
Fukasawa doesn’t see this style as essentially Japanese in character, but a more universal aesthetic, informed through a maturing of design thinking. ‘It is a universal approach, although I can’t ignore the culture in which I grew up,’ he says. ‘I like the Japanese mentality: the thought, beauty and simplicity that this brings to things, and also the feeling that art can be in the use of an object. Drinking a bowl of tea may be simple, but it can express art in the design of the bowl and the thought in the action.’
In this consideration of use, and the lack of ‘authorship,’ or ‘signature’ in design, Fukasawa says he feels closer to the modern movement in Europe than he does the work of the celebrity designer. He has no hesitation in naming Rams as a peer with whom he feels an affinity. ‘In industrial design, Rams has done great work… He designed tools for people to use, he didn’t design for himself,’ he says. ‘I feel that a designer has a role not to express his personality or thought, but to be in charge of an object and how it is used. In this way, design is probably closer to what most people think of as engineering.’
It is no secret that many of the pioneers of the Modern Movement were influenced by the simplicity and clarity of traditional Japanese design, or that the relationship between the two was not just a one-way street. What tends to evade analysis is quite how a ‘Japauhaus’ approach would prevent a designer from the natural incorporation of their own character or why this is desirable. Fukasawa explains this struggle between authorship and authenticity using my Muji polypropylene business-card holder as an example. ‘I like this case, it’s a good design. But when I designed a card case, I wanted to remove the sharp angles at the corner, which I felt were uncomfortable in the hand and in your pocket. So I added a radius,’ he says, taking out his own, PMZ version. ‘But this radius is determined by the wall thickness, and properties of the material alone, and by the size of the contents. If I decided to give it a bigger radius, then it has a “Fukasawa” character, and I hate this. My role is to design for the people who use the product, not for myself.’
This signature approach, through which objects become closely associated with their author, has become more mainstream in recent years yet it is something he finds distasteful. ‘I know that there is an audience for it, but I don’t like it if someone buys something just because it is by Naoto Fukasawa. They should buy something because they like it, not because of who designed it,’ says Fukasawa.
The inconsistencies here, of course, are not only that Fukasawa himself has become such a sought-after name, but also that his commitment to rationalism starts to look shaky when some of his most successful pieces are less shrouded in logic than one might expect. The endeavour for a lack of ‘personality’ in his work certainly seems at odds with something like the LCD TV for PMZ, which at first glance appears to be styled after an old-fashioned tube TV set, but which actually contains a modern LCD device. This is explained by the designer partly as a joke, but also partly as a comment on the ‘disappearing’ nature of technology. ‘As technology for TVs allows them to become very large and very thin, it seems as though the designer is not needed, but I disagree,’ he says. ‘This portable TV requires a case that allows the user to set it at the correct angle, a soft shape that will be comfortable if, for instance, you’re watching TV in bed.’
Among the European collection is the brilliant Sole Bag, with its re-appropriated plimsoll base, and the salt and pepper maracas, which need to be ‘played’ rather than used. The density of cultural codes inherent in these objects suggests that there is no strict formula being applied, and that they fail to adhere to a proper Japauhaus style. Whether the designer likes it or not, there is plenty of his personality in this range. Indeed, it’s only later I realise that while Fukasawa’s PMZ business-card holder might be more comfortable, my inferior Muji one is transparent: arguably more rational, but far more useful to me either way.
Any attempt to fully comprehend the subtleties of Japanese aesthetics gets rapidly bogged down in definitions, context and history, but it could be argued that realms of product design act as a bridge. One analysis comes from Japanese design critic Masaru Katsumie in the catalogue to the groundbreaking Japan Style exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum in 1980. While taking issue with the exhibition title, which suggests a transitory, or insubstantial aesthetic, he concludes that a ‘Japan style’ is identifiable. This is a long way from the calculated exoticism of souvenir-shop ‘Japonica‘, and is still evolving, but as Katsumie observes, it could be applied ‘when we conceive a design in an international context but unconsciously adopt a Japanese approach.’ This certainly seems to resonate with the comments Fukasawa has made of his work.
Signature style or not, as fans of Apple under Jonathan Ive; Braun under Rams, or Bang and Olufsen under Jacob Jensen will concur, if a consumer brand is to achieve true design approbation it needs to be the unfettered vision of one person.
The PMZ collection manages both, and this range is destined for ‘classic’ status like so much of Fukasawa’s other work. David Tonge, director of design consultancy The Division, has worked with Fukasawa at IDEO in California. ‘In the context of Japan he is a superstar,’ he says. ‘The reason for this is that he is not only a true craftsman with a sensitivity for the user, but also because he has a “grand idea”, which encompasses not only individual products, but ranges like PMZ, and his work with Muji. This is truly a unique skill in Japan’
Blueprint is media partner for the launch of Plus Minus Zero (PMZ) in the UK, and for the exhibition of Naoto Fukasawa’s work at Twentytwentyone
PMZ will be launched as part of the London Design Festival, 23-27 September at Twentytwentyone, EC1. For more information visit www.twentytwentyone.com
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