Spazio Rossana Orlandi is always one of our favourite locations to visit during Milan Design Week, you enter through those iconic RO gates through to the courtyard and wined your way down the industrial staircase in order to find break through designers in the basement. The duo YOY, a Tokyo based design studio composed by Naoki Ono, a spatial designer, and Yuki Yamamoto, a product designer were the exact breakthrough we were looking for. Founded in 2011, their design theme is to create a new story between space and objects.
MILAN DESIGN WEEK | YOY | SPAZIO ROSSANA ORLANDI
On entering the basement this year we were greeted on the right by a highly effective stitched wall created by the duo. WALL STITCH is a proposal of new sign design by the boys who worked with K’s Design Lab, otherwise known as KSDL a design & design engineering company who produce D3 TEXTURE® a 3D digital surface design technology and system. This technology reproduces texture to give the quality of embroidery with hi-res 3D printing that can be attached to pretty much any surface. WALL STITCH was exhibited at Tokyo Designers Week last year for this first time within the shipping containers area, we already have ideas buzzing around in our heads of uses for this technique within the commercial interior and event sectors.
YOY showcased a monochromatic collection, that was completely simplistic in form and materials yet powerful and thought provoking. SHADOW, a vase shaped lamp whose shadow turns into light when switched on which almost flips our opinions with the light and the shadow replacing each other. In order to create the illusion and project the shape of its shadow onto the floor and the wall, the vase structure has a shadow shaped hollow section cut out behind it with an LED inside.
Along the wall of the YOY space ran a series of modern and Japanese contemporary lights, that from a distance almost looked like they were molded from acrylic or powder-coated steel yet POSTER, is a series of wall lamps that are literally made out of A2-sized posters. The light forms are made out of a sheet of paper and the shape of a lamp shade is cut from the middle. It can fixed to a wall easily with tape and/or pins like that of a poster and various patterns can be printed on it.
We only managed to catch Naoki for a chat and snap his portrait during the busy week but we look forward to seeing what the future holds for these two Japanese designers. We hope they are scheming on something incredible for Tokyo Designers week as we already have out tickets booked.
Exhibition and Portrait Images by Emma Elizabeth
Product Images by YOY / Yasuko Furukama
© LOCAL DESIGN
