HTSI editor’s letter: why design will always look east
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
This issue is governed, very simply, by the influence of east Asian design. It’s a big topic, a vast area from which thousands of crafts and skill sets have evolved. To try to encapsulate an entire continent in a single design language would be too bold a goal; but if there is a single theme that unites the stories featured here, it is the celebration of skills and cultures that are being manipulated, modernised and made more relevant in the design vernacular of now.
In Kurume, the architect Toru Shimokawa works from a study next to the building that he was born in. Except it actually isn’t. It’s one of the quirks of Japanese architectural practice that many students start their careers by rebuilding family houses – until quite recently it was considered normal to knock down a property after a period of around 20 to 30 years. Shimokawa’s formative project was another house, the one his parents eventually moved into – he built in its place a great concrete edifice. With the home he created in 2015, however, he was more sensitive to classic tropes of Japanese design. And then ambushed them. Leo Lewis flew to Kyushu to meet Shimokawa and visit other projects that he has built via his architectural firm. At 42, Shimokawa remains a maverick in the great tradition of Japanese architecture, a self-taught but unlikely pioneer.
Felix Conran, grandson of Sir Terence, is also trying to express a new mode of living via traditional design. Conran arrived in Higashiyoshino, Nara, with his partner while on a road trip in 2023. He found a forest village in which there were a number of old abandoned houses and has since made it his purpose to resurrect them under his new business Ha Partners – the first of these is now his home. He takes us on a tour of the building nestled in the wooded surrounds. There’s something quite magical about his sylvan idyll – all achieved with the help of a community of senior neighbours who have provided invaluable insight and skills.
The sento (public bathhouse) was once the centre of Japanese community, a major feature of urban life. But social change – and the advent of bathrooms in most modern apartments – has seen their numbers plummet, from almost 18,000 in the 1960s to only around 2,000 across Japan today. A wave of next-gen designers has, however, determined not to let the sento disappear and, as Clara Baldock discovers, the baths have become the focus of a programme aimed at invigorating the custom once again. Sento come with their own artistic signatures and artisanal customs – a great many of which are similarly in dire need of support. Yet the gorgeous projects featured here make me confident that the sento will rise again.
In Seoul, Jay Lim, the founder of South Korean lifestyle brand Say Touché, explains why his native home is enjoying a “golden era” of design. He thinks the success of Korea in the design world is due to a young population who are, respectfully, forging new mores and social codes. “This generation is good at using media and machines, new-generation stuff, but our parents were very classic,” he tells Marion Willingham. “We’re not traditional Korean kids but we’ve still got the same mindset.” His generation is drawing on this hybrid new/trad culture to explore “house parties” – hitherto not a thing in the country according to Jay Lim – and other radical ideas.
And then we look to the future. Matt Vella writes about Hyundai, and in particular Lee Sang-yup, the lead of the car manufacturer’s Global Design Center, who has helped transform it into “the most progressive design organisation in the industry”. Rhodri Marsden, meanwhile, explores the business of robotics to examine what we really want from our android pals. Are they simply here to serve us, automaton butlers who fulfil basic menial tasks? Or is our interest indicative of the need for a more emotional requirement – a surrogate pet, a sexual partner or, in these lonely times, a friend? What is interesting about robots is, despite our better intelligence, they inevitably arouse in us some kind of sentimental trigger. Perhaps it’s not the robots we need to fear in the future, but the humans who think them real.
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