Shiro Kuramata

A graduate of Tokyo’s Kuwasawa Design School in 1956, Shiro Kuramata revolutionised Japanese post-war design. Fusing Japanese elegance and simplicity with distinctly modern materials and techniques, Kuramata’s designs often featured geometric shapes that disguised their function and added further depth. Aware of the new technologies and materials available to him, Kuramata was fond of using transparent materials, like acrylic and glass, to create designs with a unique lightness, as seen in his iconic Miss Blanche Chair.

In his later life, Shiro Kuramata’s designs evolved to involve brighter colours, having been inspired by the bright colours used by the Italian architect and designer, Ettore Sottsass. Today, Kuramata has been honoured with multiple retrospectives dedicated to his work and his designs are proudly displayed in the permanent collections of New York’s MoMA, the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, the Vitra Design Museum in Basel and the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto.