21_21 DESIGN SIGHT (en)

CURRENT PROGRAM

What If? BOSAI: The Next Disaster

July 4 (Fri), 2025 - November 3 (Mon), 2025

No one knows when and where natural disaster will strike. But by not ignoring the issues, we will build up ideas about what to do right now.

This exhibition looks at experiences of natural disaster, and at those surrounding issues. We start from one simple question: what defines a disaster? Exhibits include data visualizations, displays of disaster-preparedness products, and projects triggered by natural disasters. The venue is scattered with associated questions which we would like to think through with visitors. If we look ahead, the future may work out a little bit different.

Exhibition Director: WOW

UPCOMING PROGRAM

Learning from Design Maestros

November 21 (Fri), 2025 - March 8 (Sun), 2026

Human encounter provides avenues to think about the future of life and society. In this age of dramatically changing values, with its fast flows of mass information, we might wish to look back and consider masters who used design to articulate diverse viewpoints.

This exhibition focuses on six figures who we refer to as Design Maestros. Some of them extended their work into teaching, assisting the development of future designers through education. But more importantly, all shared pioneering qualities, bringing new social insights. They opened up fresh eras by putting their hopes and beliefs into practice.

Acts of design that entail thought, creativity and communication are inseparable from life itself. The exhibition uses documentary film to show the human dimensions of the six designers’ endeavors, in their own words, and puts this alongside their representative masterworks. It provokes in visitors a sense of what these designers expected from their followers, and how we too should be independent and proactive.

Exhibition Directors: Noriko Kawakami, Kaoru Tashiro

Theme: Food

March 27 (Fri), 2026 - August 9 (Sun), 2026

Food, clothing and shelter are considered the minimum requirements for human life. While clothing and shelter wrap us from outside, food fills us within. This exhibition is directed by Natsumi Toyama, a designer with wide interest in food, clothing and shelter. She sets soup as the main axis of her design activity, believing that soup can contain rich nutritious elements in their simplest dietary form. Food is the theme of this exhibition, which interacts with the five senses. Soup is the means to address Tōyama’s lifework and the boundaries between food, clothing and shelter.

Exhibition Director: Natsumi Toyama
Art Director: Yoshihisa Tanaka
Graphic Design: centre Inc.
Space Design: Fuminori Nousaku + Mio Tsuneyama
Sound Design：Tokuro Oka