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TOSHIYUKI KITA

 - Gabriella Ruggieri & partners

📌TOSHIYUKI KITA with Bizen city and Odate city: "da mille anni per il futuro".

Ready for Milan Design Week 2025?
In the meantime, let's remember some events of the FuoriSalone 2024 edition, when we went to visit the "CROSS VISION" event organized by Interni Magazine, at the University of Milan Statale.

Interni Magazine asked the designers and companies that participated in “CROSS VISION” to talk about this all’-Italian uniqueness (the ability to merge the qualities of industry and the soul of manufacturing through the Project) by putting it in a constructive comparison with the cultures of others countries, deepening research, innovation, experimentation and following the universal principles of sustainability and protection of the places in which we live: Nature and Landscape, Environment and Artifice, designed following the common objective of cultivating the sense of beauty.
We thank the companies and artists present for their availability and the material provided, not least Interni Magazine.
At the bottom you will find some useful links.

Enjoy the reading and I hope you like our photos.

Gabriella Ruggieri for 1blog4u

 - Gabriella Ruggieri & partners

 COURTYARD OF HONOUR, UNIVERSITY OF MILAN - The exhibition Da mille anni per il futuro presented in the Portico of the Courtyard of Honor, curated by the Japanese designer Toshiyuki Kita with Bizen city and Odate city, is a reflection on the future of traditional Japanese manufacturing and the relevance of craft skills that have attained outstanding levels of perfection over the years.

Combining the skills and creativity of the craftsmanship originating from the two Japanese cities, the exhibition showcases works embodying a thousand years of history.

In the products created by the craftworkers of the past,” explains the Japanese designer, “you can sense the fundamentals of many high-quality objects made with modern technology. (...) From the past to the future, we are required to reflect on how to pass on the skills and ideas behind crafts with a thousand-year history to the new generations.”

The display cases containing the products are positioned along a gallery of large-format images. In a creative crossroads between the two materials – wood and ceramics – and between craft skills a thousand years old and our imagination turned to the future.

Magewappa is the traditional Japanese technique of steam-bending wood from Odate, Akita Prefecture.

Bizen ceramics are produced by firing them at over 1200°C in kilns burning Japanese Akamatsu red pine wood. The final product enhances the natural tones of the clay, without the application of glazes or chemical fuels: an example representative of the Wabi Sabi culture. The exhibition is organized with the support of Bizen City and Odate City (www.internimagazine.com)

 - Gabriella Ruggieri & partners

Short CV  

Toshiyuki Kita is a furniture and product designer. 
He was born in 1942, in Osaka, Japan.
In 2004 he was inaugurated as a professor at the Osaka University of Arts.

Career
Kita’s earliest pieces, the Wink Chair and the Kick Table, are currently in the permanent collections of the New York City Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and Hamburg, Germany’s Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe.
Kita has served as a governmental advisor to Singapore, Thailand, and China for their country's revitalization of its design resources. He has been very active in revitalizing and promoting local Japanese traditional crafts and industries.
He was producer of the international trade fair for home and lifestyle renovation "Living & Design" and a proponent of Japanese lifestyle renovation, the "RENOVETTA" project. 
In 2015, his invitational exhibition “Il Lusso Della Natura” was held at Chiesa San Domenico Church in Alba, Italy.

Awards and honors
Kita has received multiple international awards, including the 1990 "Delta de Oro (Gold Prize)" Award of Spain, and the ADI prize "carrier Internazionale of Compasso d’Oro” of Italy in 2011.
He was bestowed with the honorary title of ‘Commendatore’ by the Italian Republic in 2017.

Publications
Kita’s recent publications include "Power of Design" (Nikkei Publishing Inc., 2007), "Local Industry + Design" (Gakugei Shuppan-Sha, 2009), and "Venture for Design 1969 - Why I Went to Italy to Design" (Gakugei Shuppan-Sha, 2012).
His DVD Made with Heart and Soul, a 20-minute documentary on his 40 years of collaboration with various local Japanese traditional arts and craftsmanship, was awarded the Gold Prize of World Media Festival 2012 (Public Relations/Culture) at Hamburg, Germany, in 2012.

 - Gabriella Ruggieri & partners

Useful links:
-www.fuorisalone.it
-www.internimagazine.it
-www.lastatalenews.unimi.it
-www.toshiyukikita.com