Tokujin Yoshioka

Born in Japan in 1967, Tokujin Yoshioka graduated from Kuwasawa Design School in 1986, and learned design from Shiro Kuramata and Issey Miyake. In 2000, he established Tokujin Yoshioka Design.

During his time at the Miyake Design Studio Tokujin has worked on window displays and accessory design for the Paris Collection. In almost 20 years collaborating with the famous japanese designer he built a strong reputation all over the world working on projects such as shop designs and an installation for the exhibition “Issey Miyake Making Things” at the Cartier Foundation in Paris, New York and Tokyo.

His main creations

Some of his important works include the design of installations for Hermès, Lexus, Peugeot, spaces for Toyota, NTT-X, BMW as well as packaging and shop interiors for RMK and Suqqu and presentation plans for Apple and Audi.

Tokujin also designed products such as “ToFU” and ”Tear Drop” for Yamagiwa, “Tokyo-Pop”, ”Kiss Me Goodbye”, and ”Boing” for Italian furniture manufacturer Driade, “Stardust” for Swarovski, “Panna Chair” for another Italian furniture manufacturer, Moroso, “Media Skin” for the KDDI design project, and “To”, for the Issey Miyake watch project. His latest product is “Kimono Chair”, which has been designed for a Swiss furniture manufacturer Vitra.

Tokujin is enthusiastic about proposing new designs for the future through the creation of experimental art pieces such as the “Honey-Pop” chair made entirely from paper, the ”Pane Chair” created by baking the fibre structural body in a kiln and the ”Glass Bench”.

The “Honey-Pop” chair, one of Tokujin Yoshioka’s masterpieces, can be admired all over the world in the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art, the Vitra Design Museum, Centre Pompidou, the Victoria & Albert Museum, Pinakothek der Moderne (die Neue Sammlung), the Israel Museum of Jerusalem, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and Montreal Museum of Fine Art.

“ToFU” and “Media Skin” (conceptual model) design objects are also showcased in the Museum of Modern Art and the “Pane Chair” is exhibited in both the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou. Furthermore, Tokujin has published two books: “Tokujin Design” printed by Gap in 2001 and more recently “Tokujin Yoshioka Design” by Phaidon in 2006.

Awards

Tokujin Yoshioka has won a number of sought after awards, among which the 1997 Design Award. In 2001 and 2002 he received the ID Annual Design Review, the A&W Coming Designer for the Future in 2001 and the Mainichi Design Award in 2002. In 2005, he obtained the Talents du Luxe, the Good Design Gold Prize 2007, (Media Skin), the Design Miami/Designer of the Year Award 2006, and in 2007 the Encouragement Prize from the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan, added to the Bulgari Brilliant Dreams Award.