SUMMARY OF THE ADJUDICATION

The items covered by Family Use Unit 3 are mostly furniture, lighting and interior furnishings. For the 2001 adjudications, there were 98 entries from 72 companies of which 44 entries from 28 companies won awards, resulting in a 44.9% success rate.
The majority of the products in this area did not involve any complicated mechanisms. If we had to name a mechanical object, just about all that would come to mind would be the electrically powered curtain rod. There were therefore few cases in which the functionality sought in the design was the deciding factor, and the feeling of the materials and the formal solutions became the major factors. Since we were dealing with what are essentially industries devoted to constructing lifestyles, the changes through time have reflected rising living standards, and this evolution can be expected to have borne fruit in the form of improvements in design. Design has three aspects, namely, conceptualizion, drafting, and esthetics, but in this unit, there is almost no conceptualizing of the strategy or system and no technically complicated drafting process, so the role of design here strongly emphasizes the esthetic aspects. Therefore, it is safe to say that this is the area that demands the most of design in the narrow sense of "the esthetics of form."

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT BASED ON TECHNOLOGICAL VALUES AND CONCEPTS

In the end, the Screening Committee was most impressed by HIZUKI, a lighting fixture from HIZUKI. These are small fixtures, but throughout the product line, the contrast between the simple stainless steel structure and the seemingly substantial materials shaped by European craftsmen gives them a deeply restful quality. The lampshades, whether made of blown glass, hammer-finished tin, white porcelain formed on a potter's wheel, or blue porcelain, are each the creations of writers or craftsmen. These are attempts to recapture technological values, or , in other words, the values of human handiwork. This position of depending on the profundity of technology becomes a statement that questions the current circumstances of technology itself. We would like to see even more independence in materials and expression in the future.

The entry that received the next highest evaluation was the Lights for Architecture LB12550 from Matsushita Electric. We liked the way in which it faithfully realized the concept of "spatial assimilation." In other words, in contrast to the concept of design as the act of forming that which gives the light fixture itself a presence, the designers have created a type of design that reduces the presence of the actual light fixture and balances with improvement of the overall quality of the space in which it is placed. The care given to such aspects as the proportions of the lighting fixtures, the feeling of the materials, and the colors is painstakingly carried to the utmost. The feel of the glass materials in the pendant light "Point Lamp" was the most outstanding feature. The amount of energy that Matsushita Electric Works has put overall design development as seen in this series of products also received high marks. It is only natural that companies that have a lot of influence on society help form the culture through product design, and we would like to see other companies adopt this position.

THE EUROPEAN MINDSET IN DESIGN

On the whole, products that had deep ties to foreign countries were evaluated very positively, including ADAL's LEM A, LEM B, Dream Sogo's Fusion Series, and Idee's Gomer Pile Unit. If we take the HIZUKI lighting fixtures as a starting point for the European mindset, then perhaps the product formation techniques of foreign design, which may be summed up as "modern lifestyles plus esthetic elements," suggest the directions that product design may take in the future.

TRADITIONAL MATERIALS AND CRAFTSMANSHIP

In addition, some products emphasized the kind of hand processing that comes from the use of traditional materials and craftsmanship. The ZEN stool from AIDA, which received the Prize for Small and Medium Enterprises embodies the weight and thickness of the wooden materials WEAVE series easy chair and ottoman from Takumi and the Mitsubright lamp from Yamagishi are similar. We would like designers in the tradition-based market to learn from the Italian craftsmen's pursuit of ever greater skill and refinement. They should reacquaint themselves with Japan's traditional technologies and continue to present them to the market in the form of contemporanl products.
In the area of ecological products, the purple series of Duskin's New Life Care Series won praise for having developed unique products over a long period of time, with a series of purple mops, vacuum cleaners, and other cleaning tools. Now that people are moving away from materialism, everyone realizes that the rental market will have a large role to play. Duskin also won points for actively leading society with its fully-designed series of products. We would like to see these area expanded as well as improvements in service to match the material improvements.

COMPLETING THE ADJUDICATION

Looking at the entries overall, the members of the Screening Committee offered such impressions as, "Most of the products have been around for a long time, and on the whole, they lacked novelty," "They're not asking the right questions about the problems with existing products," "They need to pay more attention to ecological concerns," and "We've been given a hint about some of the directions that design should take in the future."

Many companies working in this area seem unable to go beyond the long-standing boundaries of this market. It may be that they have only casual contacts with the designers, since these are small-scale projects, or it may be that they feel bound by conventional practices. These companies need to realize that the "lifestyle building industry" is still an undeveloped market and hurry to reconstruct their design strategy. Unless they do so, foreign brands will come to dominate the upscale market, as they already have with clothing and accessories. On the other hand, the Asian market is growing rapidly, and there are even some areas in which the Japanese market is beginning to lag behind them. Furniture, lighting, and interior furnishings offer a variety of possibilities for design. We would like to see companies trying to rediscover the three basic principles of conceptualization, drafting, and esthetics, and to keep function, composition, materials, ecology, and market strategy in mind as they design their products.

Toshiroh Ikegami
Chief Jury of Unit 3
Professor, Kyoto City University of Arts