Asian Bench 165

Designing shape is to give form to values that people tacitly share and wish for. Naoto Fukasawa visually captures these values and he draws the exact outline of them. His ability for visualising such unseen outlines for things is not easily worded and described, nonetheless, people are convinced with his ability when they experience his design. Fukasawa’s notions and expressions to approach essential values of things through design travel beyond borders or domains and his thoughts are well respected internationally. His concept for finding hints in subconscious behaviour of people which he named “Without Thought”, is most known and he runs “Without Thought” workshops to share his thoughts. Fukasawa collaborates with world leading companies and brands in such countries as Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Scandinavian countries and Asian countries while consulting Japanese leading companies locally. His area of work is broad and he works with various fields in design beyond categories. Consulting works for Japanese companies are mainly focused on evaluating their cooperate strategies in line with the mean of sociality and how we define quality of life in order to direct the companies towards where society is inevitably heading. Such consulting work extends as far as to visualise design for their products which marks the company’s social responsibilities as well as to visualise their cooperate strategies and Fukasawa‘s work for consulting has led them to many successful results. Biography Fukasawa graduated from Tama Art University in 1980. After working for IDEO's San Francisco and Tokyo offices, he established Naoto Fukasawa Design in 2003 acting as a designer and a consultant for companies, both domestic and overseas. Professor of Department of Integrated Design, Tama Art University. He has been the fifth director of the Japan Folk Crafts Museum since 2012.