Kenya Hara directs Japanese textile show

Graphic designer Kenya Hara is directing the Tokyo Fiber Senseware ’09 exhibition to be held in Milan, which will showcase Japan’s textile industry.

The exhibition, which is being held on 22-27 April in Milan’s Triennale Design Museum, follows Japan Fiber ’07, which was held in Paris, and will display high-technology chemical fibres.

Among those exhibiting will be British industrial designer Ross Lovegrove, French designer Gwenael Nicolas, who studied at the Royal College of Art, and Japanese architects Kengo Kuma and Shigeru Ban.

Hara says, ‘Senseware refers to materials or mediums that arouse a creative desire in people.

‘Just as stone inspired and energised people in ancient times, paper since the invention of the printing press, and electronic media with the Internet, what kind of desire will Japan’s ever more sophisticated chemical fibres awake in people as a new mode of Senseware?’

Hara and Ban recently curated the Japan Car exhibition, which opened at London’s Science Museum last November.