MUJI is for Winners
This is the winning entry for the MUJI design competition. The challenge was to design a new product for iconic old MUJI that articulates the concept of “SUMI”, which kind of means existing at the edge of something or in the corner, unseen, but not quite. There’s no clean English equivalent.
This is by winner Yoh Komiyama from Japan. It looks like a clear, non-functional appendage that stems from the actual plug and takes its place when there’s no need for power. In the designer’s words:
Traditional Japanese people called an existing thing in this world “Utsusemi.”
“Utsusemi” is a cast-off skin of the cicada insect. The outlet which I saw was an empty container, an “Utsusemi”. An invisible soul (a transparent outlet plug) entered the container, and so it was reborn to connect the world.
When an outlet plug is pulled out of an outlet it lies like a cast-off skin without a soul.
But will it yearn for an outlet so?
“A cast-off skin” is based on this simple idea.
Komiyama personifies the plug like Adams personifies rabbits in Watership Down; they’re not humanized, but are given a human-decodable voice that articulates the experience of their species. I need to develop this kind of empathy.
1 Comment
January 15th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
how do i get in touch with Yoh Komiyama?