Design Anthology, Asia Pacific Edition

Design Anthology, Asia Edition is a luxury interiors, design, art and architecture magazine, with a strong focus on Asia and it's burgeoning creative scene. Aimed at a sophisticated, well-travelled audience, we aim to provide a reading experience that will transport and inspire you.

FROM THE EDITOR

Design Anthology, Asia Pacific Edition

OUR WORLD

Dossier • People, products and places to know

OPENINGS

PRODUCTS

READING LIST

Welcome to The Louis

Everyday Ingenuity • A coffee cup. A knife. A cordless vacuum cleaner. Filled with his creations for the quotidian, the Kyoto studio of Japanese product designer Sosuke Nakabo is a sanctuary of design for daily life. Nakabo is the design director at MUJI — known for its minimalist, functional essentials — and regularly visits the company’s Tokyo HQ, but he also uses his peaceful studio in Kyoto as a space to work on his own projects.

Celebrating Bamboo

A Distinctive Touch • Sustainability. Slow making. Nature. Organic forms. These are among the themes interwoven into Japan’s current design scene, as both emerging and established names step into a new creative order.

Beyond the Surface

Sense of Space • Teruhiro Yanagihara Studio’s newest creative space, Vague Kobe, fills the top floors of a former bank with everything from freshly baked bread to art.

Craft Country • Japan’s storied craft traditions are upheld by generations-old companies and a new vanguard of individuals carrying them into the future.

Championing Craft

Style • Fashion for the design-conscious

Growing Slow

The Creative Director’s Edit • Yusuke Yanagi is the creative director of Still By Hand, the utilitarian brand known for understated, utilitarian pieces that can be worn every day but stand out for their silhouettes and detailing. As guest editor of this issue’s Editor’s Picks, Yanagi has selected a few of his favourite Japanese brands.

Wanderlust • Designer destinations

Hiroshima Renaissance

Privileging Place • The Shishi-Iwa House brand continues to expand with the Ryue Nishizawa-designed No.03, and experiences that highlight the locality.

OPENINGS

Vernissage • News from the art world

Self Starters

Rural Renewal • Art festivals seeking to reinvent provincial locales have been popping up all over Japan in recent years, but the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale is arguably the original.

Home • Spaces that inspire

Ode to Monochrome

Crafted Connections

Line by Line

Open House

Art House

Architectonics • Surveying the built environment

Béton Nécessaire • Paul Tulett challenges stereotypes of brutalist architecture by documenting Japanese examples in Okinawa and beyond.

Micro-Megacity

Resilient City

Building Community Tokyo

Coming Home Hong Kong

Open to All Seoul

Material Harmony Shanghai

Aesop by Design • Since its founding in 1987, Antipodean skincare brand Aesop has been renowned for its commitment to design and hospitality. Each one of the 400-plus Aesop stores is unique, conceived by designers and architects from around the world but always with the same emphasis on product, place and people.

The Craft of Karimoku Furniture