The annual Designart Tokyo festival returned for its 2025 edition, transforming the city into a sprawling creative network under the theme “Brave – The Pursuit of Instinctive Beauty.” Spanning key districts like Shibuya, Omotesando, and Roppongi, the event served as a necessary counterpoint to the age of optimization and formulaic design, championing work driven by intuition, authenticity, and creative courage. With over 130 exhibitors and presentations showcased in venues ranging from prestigious galleries to railway underpasses, the festival brought together established international names and a new guard of emerging Japanese talent. The result was a vibrant, citywide exploration of how design, art, and technology can intersect to honor the imperfect, the human, and the deeply felt emotional connection between creator and material.
Thematic Core: Instinct and the Brave Creator
The theme “Brave – The Pursuit of Instinctive Beauty” was more than a mere curatorial suggestion; it was a philosophical mandate for the entire festival. In a period marked by rapid technological transformation and the dominance of data-driven design, the organizers challenged participants to return to the core of creativity: intuition and emotional intelligence. This framing encouraged works that were authentic, personal, and unafraid to show the hand of the maker or the complexity of the material.
The festival’s central aim was to foster a rediscovery of sensitivity and empathy in the creative process. Instead of viewing creation as optimization—the traditional industrial model—Designart Tokyo presented it as open exploration, celebrating the inherent beauty found in imperfection and the intuitive gesture. This approach resonated deeply, resulting in a slate of projects that were critically engaging, often blurring the boundaries between high art, functional design, and material research.
A New Hub: The Shibuya Gallery and Spatial Design
A significant development for the 2025 edition was the establishment of a new central hub: the DESIGNART GALLERY at MEDIA DEPARTMENT TOKYO in Shibuya. Spanning three floors and over 1,100 square meters, this space was designed by the Hong Kong-based architectural practice Collective to serve as the main, highly visible group exhibition site.
The spatial design by Collective was a key component of the festival’s aesthetic success, providing an immersive environment that balanced the display of diverse works. The gallery housed core exhibitions, including the international projects and a showcase of “experimental approaches” and “up-and-coming young artists.” This centralization in Shibuya, a district synonymous with commercial and cultural energy, ensured a massive influx of visitors and solidified the event’s stature as one of Japan’s largest design showcases.
Reimagining Tradition: The Architectural Tea Room and Washi
Designart Tokyo consistently excels at bridging Japan’s deep craft traditions with modernist industrial materials. Two projects exemplified this successful tension:
The SEN-AN exhibition, led by designer Yuzo Kosaka for the Mitate project, offered a “spatial experiment that reconstructs the traditional culture of the tea room.” The installation featured a chashitsu built from light-gauge steel (LGS) that was deliberately allowed to rust in places to evoke the passage of time. Adhering to the measurements of traditional tatami mats, the raw, industrial structure achieved a tactile, peaceful atmosphere, contrasting beautifully with its coarse materials and philosophical depth.
Similarly, the SEN fukui project, “within the neighborhood,” brought the spirit of Echizen Washi (traditional handmade paper) into contemporary design. This exhibition highlighted the deep bond between makers and materials in Fukui Prefecture, showcasing pieces created in close collaboration with local artisans. The works celebrated the quiet strength and honesty of handmade paper, inviting viewers to see materials not just as products, but as living connections within a community shaped by shared stories and time.
Material Alchemy: Error, Melting, and Upcycling
The festival’s “Brave” theme encouraged designers to embrace imperfection and material transformation, leading to several innovative pieces that celebrated the beauty of the unexpected.
Natsumi Komoto’s “Kizashi – From Error to Mirror” collection featured sculptural furniture crafted from aluminum that the designer had deliberately polished and melted to create varied patterns and textures. Komoto aimed to give the metal an “unexpectedly soft nuance,” transforming the often-rigid industrial material into playful, organic forms, demonstrating the aesthetic power found when embracing the natural processes of material change.
Another notable example was the Pyro PLA Project by TORQ Design, which experimented with the ubiquitous 3D-printing material, PLA. The designers melted and blended the layered traces of 3D-printed surfaces using an open flame to produce new, organic textures. This highly tactile project highlighted the transformation of a digital, mass-production medium back into something textural, unique, and inherently handmade, affirming the festival’s pursuit of finding beauty in the process of error and discovery.
The Design Narrative: Memory, Logistics, and Sound
Several designers leveraged unconventional narratives to frame their work, pushing the boundaries of what constitutes an exhibition.
Designer Yoshiaki Kanamori (part of the Under 30 exhibition) explored the idea of urban memory with his “Jokei – Scene (or Memory)” installation. Working in a maze of spaces beneath a railway line, Kanamori transformed overlooked, everyday architectural fragments—stairs into lamps, window grills into lighting installations—to preserve and offer a glimpse of typical Japanese cityscapes from memory. This work gave profound emotional weight to the commonplace aesthetics of the city.
In a different vein, the Nomadic Collective’s “Buy Method, Keep Becoming” exhibition focused on the oft-ignored packaging and logistics of design. The collective showed their furniture and objects alongside the cardboard they used for commercial transport. This cardboard was scored with a grid of slits, allowing it to be reconfigured into various shapes and exhibited, emphasizing the material relationship between aesthetic product, practical logistics, and the potential for repurposing.
