Naoto Fukasawa


Naoto Fukasawa is a Japanese industrial designer, author, and educator. Since 2014, he teaches Integrated Design at Tama Art University as a professor. In 2003, he established Naoto Fukasawa Design.

Biography

He was born in Kōfu, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan in 1956. He graduated in 1980 from Tama Art University with a degree in product design.
Fukasawa worked at IDEO in San Francisco, California and later helped establish the IDEO Tokyo office. He established Naoto Fukasawa Design in 2003. Since 2002, Fukasawa has been a MUJI advisory board member and worked on the development of many of their products. Representative works of Fukasawa include the "±0" brand of household electrical appliances and sundries. In recent years, he has released a host of new works with Italian companies B&B Italia, Driade, Magis, Artemide, Danese, and Boffi, as well as in Germany and Northern Europe, and they have garnered a great deal of attention.
As of 2012, he is one of the co-directors of 21 21 DESIGN SIGHT, Japan's first design museum.
Fukasawa previously taught at Musashino Art University. Since 2014, he teaches Integrated Design at Tama Art University as a professor.
Many of his works are included in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art including, MUJI's Wall-mounted Compact Disc Player, Neon Cellular Phone by KDDI Corporation, and Infobar Cellular Phone by KDDI Corporation.
He has been described by Bloomberg Businessweek as one of the world's most influential designers.

Select awards

In the past, he 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.