International Visitors Programme
The architect Hideyuki Nakayama and Eizo Okada, the director of Design East, spent time in the Netherlands with support from the Dutch embassy in Japan. Okada sought to meet designers with a view to inviting them to exhibit work at the three-day DESIGN EAST event, which took place in Osaka from 14 through 16 September 2013. In Eindhoven, they visited designers and agencies including Raw Color, C-Fabriek and Paul Heijnen, as well as the Design Academy Eindhoven. In Amsterdam, they met designers including Borre Akkersdijk and Lenneke Langenhuijsen. Nakayama gave a talk at Het Nieuwe Instituut about his work and the ideas underlying it, preceded by an introduction by Cathelijne Nuijsink, whose book How to Make a Japanese House features one of his designs on the cover. Videos of work by all the designers who met Okada and Nakayama appeared at Design East; the exhibition was attended by more than 2,000 people.
About Eizo Okada
Eizo Okada is the director of the agency S&O Design, which he founded with the product designer Hisakazu Shimizu in 2012. He studied at the Kyushu University design school and went on to work for Tokyo's Seibu department store before earning a PhD from Japan's Chiba University in 2001 and subsequently teaching at the Kyoto Institute of Technology as an assistant and associate professor. He has published articles on design in various Japanese magazines and books. His work has been exhibited in Kyoto, Tokyo and Rotterdam, and in 2002 he was awarded an incentive prize by the Japanese Society for the Science of Design.
About Hideyuki Nakayama
Hideyuki Nakayama graduated from the Tokyo University of the Arts with a degree in architecture and planning in 2000. After working at Toyo Ito & Associates Architects for several years, he opened Hideyuki Nakayama Architecture in 2007. His work has been exhibited in Tokyo, Los Angeles and Lisbon and featured in various journals. He has won various prizes in his home country of Japan.