Introduction:
What Is “life knit design”?

“life knit design” is a Sekisui House design philosophy, formulated in 2023, that involves weaving customer sensibilities into their homes, so that they grow more attached the longer they live there. I led the formulation of this design philosophy, and am currently working on creating new homes that embody it.

After graduating university, I began my career in product planning at MUJI, moved to Sweden, directed the design of the living room floor at the Isetan department store, and designed public institutions, again at MUJI, and I feel like all of the experiences I have had so far have led me to my current work. In this lecture, I would like to go over how I got here, in terms of my work and daily life, and talk about what I have learned from each of these experiences, as the beginning of the beginning of “life knit design.”

“Kore Ga Ii (That’s What I Want)” vs.
“Kore de Ii (This Is Fine)”

After graduating university, I started working at Ryohin Keikaku Co., Ltd., the company that operates MUJI. After working as a sales representative, I was put in charge of product planning for household goods. That was when a senior employee taught me the difference between “Kore ga ii (This is what I want)” and “Kore de ii (This is fine).” Say a customer is very drawn to a high-quality, expensive chair, and spends their savings to buy it. Our goal is for them to be able to say, “MUJI’s fine for all the other furniture,” and to say it with confidence. “This is fine” is the attitude we’re working towards. You could also use the analogy of a figure-ground relationship. MUJI as a brand is not necessarily about simplicity, but about becoming the ground to the figure, in this case the beautiful chair, and it is this that has made the brand simple.

I spent all my time at MUJI thinking about what it means to make something simple. A senior employee had told me, “You won’t know how to simplify until you know what ‘good’ actually is.” So I spent my time going to shops with high-quality interior décor and looking at various traditional craft pieces, and asking myself what parts would have to be simplified to turn them into things that could be used every day. For instance, while doing research on Arita ware, I noticed how good the quality of the material was before the maki-e (Japanese lacquer decoration technique) was applied, and decided to use that material to make various containers for MUJI. Through this and other efforts, I pursued the idea of “This is fine” in my own ways.

Another experience that left a real impact on me was participating in the “Found MUJI” project, in which MUJI staff travel all around the world to find good products for everyday life. We went to places like Wales, which produces wool double cloth, and Islamic countries with their many different types of rugs, and thought about how we could incorporate these things that are so rooted in the culture of these regions into our own lives. These sorts of days, spent looking for and discovering materials, have become one of the foundations of my life.

Interior Design Is Self-Expression

I left Ryohin Keikaku when my husband was assigned overseas, and lived in Sweden for three years, and the experiences I had there led to the next steps of my career. One thing that very much struck me was the parking lot of the furniture manufacturer, IKEA. There were normal, everyday cars, but also luxury cars. I realized IKEA was a brand that offered the Swedish people all kinds of ways to have fun, regardless of how much money they had. While in Japan, I had thought of brands and the market in a sort of hierarchy, and this experience was valuable because it broke down this fixed way of thinking.

I had also heard that people in Sweden liked interior design and used it as a way to get through the long winters, and that was definitely true. They would rearrange their rooms each season, decorate them with flowers… I learned that interior design was self-expression.

Cultivating One’s Ability to Choose /
The Strength to Say “This Is Wonderful”

After returning to Japan, I had the opportunity to work as director of the living room floor of Isetan Shinjuku. The way of thinking over at MUJI had been to simplify, but at Isetan it was to multiply value—which meant I would be taking on a new kind of creation.

In 2008, we made a cuckoo clock in response to a request from more trees, an association founded by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto, to produce and sell a product made with thinned wood from Japan. We asked product designer Naoto Fukasawa to create the original design, and enlisted several other artists, including sculptor Kohei Nawa, to customize it, ultimately producing a cuckoo clock that “multiplies” art.

The most high-profile project I was involved in during my time at Isetan was the project with furniture manufacturer Maruni Wood Industry. There’s a beautiful chair called the HIROSHIMA that’s designed by the aforementioned Naoto Fukasawa. But when I went to visit the factory, I found that some of these HIROSHIMA chairs—already beautifully finished—had been thrown away because they had found knots in the wood in the final inspection. I said, “What a waste! These knots make these chairs unique,” and planned and hosted a sales event for the wood knot chairs. I also set up a project called “fushi to kakera” as an extension of this event, selling the wood knot chairs (fushi, or “knots”), now decorated with a patchwork of fabric scraps (kakera, or “fragments”) derived from original fabric by minä perhonen designer Akira Minagawa. “fushi to kakera” has since become an ongoing event that is implemented whenever we have accumulated enough wood knot chairs and fabric scraps.

Another experience that had a major impact on me was the pop-up shop for MERCI, a specialty shop from Paris, held at Isetan. I actually have been greatly influenced by the owner of MERCI’s way of thinking. When I went to visit MERCI in Paris, I was deeply struck by the way the tableware section was arranged—specifically, that there were DURALEX glasses that cost just several hundred yen, lined up in the same way as Baccarat crystal glasses that cost tens of thousands of yen. Generally speaking, in department stores, you would separate the daily necessities from the luxury items. But the owner of MERCI had had them laid out in the same space, because their sensibilities had told her that both were wonderful items. The creative store design at MERCI taught me the importance of cultivating my ability to choose, and of having the strength to say, “This thing I’ve chosen is wonderful.”

It Is the Atmosphere
Around the Product That Is Important

It was when my work at Isetan had come to a natural sort of pause that my old company, Ryohin Keikaku, asked me to supervise the design of general household goods. From there, I worked on things like MUJI’s home appliance series, and gradually became involved in way-of-living proposals and projects for public institutions. I planned, for instance, the “Gendai no Koya” project, in which Japanese and international designers proposed a lifestyle in which people spend their weekends in the suburbs. I also designed the sofas in Terminal 3 of Narita International Airport, and was commissioned by a Finnish start-up to design the body of the autonomous bus GACHA. Over the course of working on these projects, I began to think more broadly about the atmosphere around products, and also acquired a broader perspective on urban development.

A Home That Listens to and
Incorporates to
Customer Sensibilities

Then four years ago, I joined Sekisui House. When I joined the company, the president made me an offer: to create the design philosophy for Sekisui House. It seems that they needed a design code to bring together the various employees—designers, sales representatives, interior coordinators, and more—and drive further growth. To do this, I first took the time to tour the home showrooms of various manufacturers. Many manufacturers talked about stock values such as longevity and durability, but there was one sales representative who said, off-hand, that they could design a home in accordance with the furniture and art that I owned. That left an impression on me, because I felt there was opportunity in that, in listening to and incorporating customer sensibilities.

This experience inspired me to create, after considerable discussions with the various divisions in the company, the “life knit design” design philosophy, which involves providing people with homes in which they weave more attachment over time. At the beginning of this lecture, I talked about the figure-ground relationship. I feel that it is precisely because Sekisui House possesses such advanced technologies that we are able to create a box (ground) that can reflect customer sensibilities (figure). By multiplying the stock value the company has cultivated thus far with the “sensibility value” that comes from listening to and incorporating customer sensibilities, I thought we would be able to further bring out the strengths of Sekisui House.

To realize this new design philosophy, we must be able to capture the sensibilities of each individual customer, and reflect them in the interior and exterior of their homes. However, the interior design proposals of conventional housing manufacturers were based on certain established styles—for instance, Japanese modern or British country. In order to better understand customer sensibilities, I developed six sensibility fields—“Peaceful,” “Tender,” “Spirit,” “Cozy,” “Luxe,” and “Playful”—and created a system where we could gain an understanding of a customer’s sensibilities as we spoke to them (“It seems you like things to be peaceful and tender”), and share this information with designers and interior coordinators. In this way, we have created a total plan that includes not only the design philosophy, but also a system to realize it, and are currently creating new houses based on this plan.

Finally, I am someone who has spent my life thinking about people’s daily lives. And now that I’m building houses, I would like to use design to continue providing people with safety, security, comfort, and the happiness beyond, to create beautiful ways of life.