By Konstantin Grcic

It must have been about three or four years ago that I was first introduced to Naoto Fukasawa. When I called him this time to announce my visit to Tokyo and request to interview him, he modestly sighed at the prospect of finding a spare hour for me in his busy schedule. But, I guess one cliché about the Japanese is true for Naoto – he can never say “no”.

We agree to meet early on a Monday morning in March, and as I take the short walk from Harajuku station to Naoto’s studio, the sun shines down to cast a surreal, almost celluloid light onto the typical alley- ways of downtown Tokyo. Naoto Fukasawa Design occupies the two top floors of a sober-looking four-storey building in the Jingumae neighbourhood. His staff work on the upper floor while Naoto has his own space just below. The only connection between the two levels is a blue metal staircase on the outside of the building; inside the office, everything seems to blend into a soft monochrome white – the floor, the walls, the furniture, the white polystyrene models, and a white bicycle.

KONSTANTIN GRCIC: It is 8 o’clock on a Monday morning. What would you be doing, normally? Can you describe what your day is like at the office?
NAOTO FUKASAWA: I start work at 7:30 am every morning. In fact, everyone comes into work that early. Obviously our job is to design, every day. But we can’t be thinking about design all the time. It is important that we are doing other things together … ordinary tasks that give structure to our work day like cleaning the office, having tea, etc. It is this routine which creates a freedom for the mind.

Can you elaborate a little bit more on the organization of your office? Where does the work take place and how?
Well, this is very simple … [He takes a piece of paper and starts drawing the floorplan of his office – a rectangular space measuring roughly 30 m2. The layout is characterized by white table tops running down the full length of the two adjacent walls. In the center of the space stands a large piece of furniture housing hundreds of small plastic drawers]. I set up two long tables, 5.5 meters long! All my staff sits here. There are no personal things around their desks, only the computer workstation and software. That means that the space is incredibly clean. All the tools, the rulers, scissors and so on are shared by everyone … even a pen [laughs]. This way people grow an awareness for their environment. In the middle of the room there is a big storage for everything we need. The top of it is used as a large platform, a big white surface on which we put the projects which are being worked on. For me this surface represents both a physical and a mental island … This is where the work becomes visible.

The idea of common tools is quite interesting. It seems to have a strong social aspect. Does that reflect your vision of a material world – that, in a way, private belonging is less relevant than the idea of sharing?
Hmm, I wouldn’t go this far. It is more about sharing the working style. Have you heard the story about the factory workers at Toyota? They get together every week in order to discuss how work could be improved by simple changes. Sometimes it is small things that make a big difference, that can totally affect the quality of the work flow. Like I said, it is the workers who do that – not the top managers. I like that idea!

What you describe is the idea of “designing a process”, making the work environment very efficient. There is an interesting relationship between structure/discipline and the creative freedom enabled within that.
Sure. Let me show you an example for this [Uses the phone to call upstairs. An assistant brings Naoto’s diary, a DIN A3 timetable completely covered with handwritten notes]. This is my schedule for the week. Everyone in the office has this document. The empty blocks mean “open space” – that is my only free time, when my assistants can discuss work with me. All other blocks are meetings, meetings, meetings [laughs]. So my team really understands at what times during the week they can discuss their projects with me.

It must be frustrating that each day is narrowed down to 1–2 hours you can share with your staff. How do you cope with that? People have this idea of us being creative people and of a designer’s day being a creative day.
Oh, these empty blocks just mean physical time, however my brain is always working … endlessly.

Is your work then mainly an intellectual process, “thinking time”, rather than the romantic idea of sitting down and sketching or making a model?
[Amused] Oh no, I don’t have time for that! My most creative moment is the point zero, the kick-off meeting, when I am sitting together with the client to start the project. Clients normally come to me with their problem. The thing is that by describing to me what their problem is, that already gives me the answer. Very fast [laughs].

You often claim that design should be natural, normal. What you have just said seems to reflect that. If you are still talking about physical things, products that have a concrete form and appearance. How much do you define how the things look?
That is when I share time with my assistants around the central island at the studio. I am not really describing the exact shape of a product. Rather, I am trying to make them share a mind set, a direction we should be aiming at. Talking to them about my idea should trigger an invisible expectation. That is the image I want to fix. What I am trying to get at is very precise, the essence of a project – something similar to “soup-stock.” Many designers are thinking that what they have to do is add salt and pepper to a soup … that is a popular idea about design. But I am more interested in creating just the soup stock, just the essence, without taste. I prefer someone else to add the spices to it – the client or the end-user.

In your role as design director for MUJI you successfully exercise this idea of soup-stock. You establish the precise DNA for what MUJI products are. But then there is also the CD-player you have designed for them which has become such an iconic product. I would say it has quite a lot of salt in it, or do you see it differently?
Well, most people think that stereos have to look like the so-called “black stack” … but that shouldn’t necessarily be so. My concept followed a different interpretation, but that doesn’t mean I added salt.

The original concept for the CD-player was your contribution to a design workshop entitled “Without Thought”. What exactly is the meaning of this title? It sounds provocative but I suspect that was your intention.
Sure. An interesting aspect of the new design is that it totally blends with our behaviour. An object assimilates so much with our expectation or experience that it becomes totally natural. Look at this chair. [He is pointing at the black plastic chairs we are sitting on, designed by Vico Magistretti.]While I am talking to you my body is sitting very casually and my arm is resting on this piece of the backrest. I don’t have to think about that – my body does it without thought. [He gets up to pick up another chair, a black Thonet chair.] I take this chair and I don’t have to think about the handle for picking it up – that is without thought.

You have learnt to switch on any lamp by pulling the little string which hangs off it. I use this knowledge for my CD-player. Even though it is a totally new thing, you already have knowledge of it. You can adapt to it unconsciously.

Actually, as a designer I know you. I know how you will behave, what you will anticipate. And deciding when to follow you or when to go another way … that is a very important balance.

There are two types of “you” inside your body. One with a brain thinking about everything, and the other one is just the body … not thinking. I am always interested in the one not thinking [laughs].