Naoto Fukasawa

Naoto Fukasawa (; born 1956) is a Japanese designer, author, and educator, working in the fields of product and furniture design. He is known for his product design work with the Japanese retail company Muji, as well as collaborations with companies such as Herman Miller, Alessi, B&B Italia, Emeco, Magis, Realme, and HAY.

Fukasawa has been described by Bloomberg News as one of the world's most influential designers.

Biography Fukasawa was born in Kōfu, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan in 1956. He studied product design at Tama Art University graduating in 1980. After graduating, Fukasawa worked as a product developer at Seiko Epson until 1988, before joining the design firm ID Two, a predecessor to the design consulting firm IDEO in San Francisco, California, for whom he later established a Tokyo office in 1996. During this time he collaborated with the English industrial designer Sam Hecht. In 2002, Fukasawa became a MUJI advisory board member, and worked on the development of many of their products. After leaving IDEO, he established his own independent firm Naoto Fukasawa Design in 2003. In recent years, he has several Italian furniture companies including B&B Italia, Driade, Magis, Artemide, Danese, and Boffi, as well several in Germany and Northern Europe.

He is one of the co-directors of 21 21 DESIGN SIGHT, Japan's first design museum. Since 2012, he has been the director of the Japan Folk Crafts Museum.

Since 2014, Fukasawa has taught Integrated Design at Tama Art University as a professor,

Fukasawa's work is held in the collections of many museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MUJI's wall-mounted CD player, Plus Minus Zero humidifier, and various Neon and Infobar cellular phones by KDDI), the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (Hiroshima chair)

Design approach

Naoto Fukasawa's design approach is centered around the relationship between design and behavior, using terms such as "design dissolving in behavior", "center of consciousness", "normality", "outline" and "archetype" to describe his work. Items presented in the exhibition ranged from notable objects such as the Bialetti espresso maker to anonymously designed and mass produced objects such as disposable plastic plates. The term defines objects as being absent of identity, originality, and elements that leave an impression, leading to objects that appear ordinary. This design concept can be seen reflected in Fukasawa's work with Muji, where products are created with an anti-branding approach of not presenting any traits that characterize the object.

Select awards Fukasawa has won over fifty awards, including the American IDEA Gold Award, the German iF Gold Award, the British D&AD Gold Award, the Mainichi Design Award and the 5th Oribe Award.

1991 – IDEA Gold Award 1994 – Red Dot Design Award 1996 – iF Gold Award 2014 – Good Design award 2018 – Isamu Noguchi Award 2024 – Design Excellence Award, Collab, Philadelphia Museum of Art 2026 – German Design Award Personality of the Year

Select exhibitions 2006, Super Normal, curated by Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa at Axis Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 2016–17, The Boundary between Kogei and Design at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary art, Kanazawa 2024–25, Naoto Fukasawa: Things in Themselves, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Works Naoto Fukasawa has consulted and designed for several companies, ranging from home appliance retailers to furniture manufacturers. Companies that he has designed for include:

Publications

Gallery