Profile
Born in Tokyo in 1960. Studied under designers Choei Hara and Shigemitsu Hara. Established Koizumi Studio in 1990. In 2003, he opened Koizumi Tool Store as a place to communicate his designs. He has designed everything from architecture to chopstick rests, and now travels all over Japan to collaborate with local communities. In 2015, he launched a general incorporated association called Waza, which is dedicated to the restoration of handicrafts. He is a professor emeritus at Musashino Art University. He received the Mainichi Design Award in 2012. In 2015, he won the Grand Prize at the Japan Craft Exhibition.
Koizumi Studio
Thoughts on Design
I am often involved with wood as a material, and I am always excited to find wooden tools that have turned candy-colored and have rounded corners at antique stores. Recently, I have also been working with plastic materials, and I feel the time that materials have. It takes hundreds of millions of years for petroleum, the base material of plastic, to become a material, and the energy required to process it is not half-hearted, but it becomes a tool that endures for a long time. Wood, on the other hand, is a material that can be used for 100 years. On the other hand, wood is a great material after 100 years, and the time and effort to make it can be carefully spent by human hands. After that, it will not last long without care, but the relationship between the time of wood and the time of human hands seems to be just right. I think it is important now to choose the right material for the right time, and to think about the right distribution for the right time.
