Q: Your works seem to be divided into two distinct aspects. The first being design for commercial clients for industrial production and the second as your personal work or one-off pieces. How do you position these different works?

Tokujin Yoshioka: Works such as the Honey-pop armchair or Pane chair emerged from my personal drive to visualize and formalize design for the near future while investigating what design will be like in the far future. These projects were self-initiated challenges to the history of design, driven solely by my personal motivation, without any external requirements or objectives. While commercial projects begin with a distinct requirement and objective, my personal projects start from an idea and don’t necessarily touch the ground. These experimental endeavors become a reservoir of ideas, which may later influence commercial products. For instance, the Honey-pop armchair inspired Driade to modify and produce the Tokyo-pop chair, and similarly, Moroso adapted the Pane chair into the Panna chair.

Q: How do you approach your designs?

Tokujin Yoshioka: In my personal work, it starts with establishing a vision. For example, with the KOU-AN Glass Tea House, the initial concept wasn’t about creating a glass tea house but making a tea house with no physical volume, focusing on the spiritual essence. The material selection process, whether it was glass, plastic, or acrylic, was driven by this vision. The process often starts with an impossible challenge, encountering many obstacles along the way. It’s crucial to share the vision with my team to foster empathy and navigate these challenges, striving to realize the unseen .