Shunji Yamanaka on designing to make people happy

Industrial Design/2008/22 min/Reel № 08.001

ByShunji Yamanaka

Shunji Yamanaka on designing to make people happy

South African Design Week/Recorded 2008

A close reading, kept within reach.

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The short version

Shunji Yamanaka takes industrial design as a lens on the larger question the festival keeps returning to: what design owes to the people and places it works among. The talk moves from specific projects toward a broader argument about practice.

Recorded in Japan in 2008, the conversation is grounded in Shunji's own working method — the compromises, the constraints, and the moments where the work taught them something they didn't expect.

The closing turn is characteristic of the archive: less a conclusion than a provocation, handed to the audience to carry into their own disciplines.

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What did Shunji say about…

Shunji Yamanaka discusses the contact point between art and science.

Shunji Yamanaka

About the speaker

Shunji Yamanaka

Tokyo/Japan

Shunji Yamanaka is the founder and president of Leading Edge Design in Tokyo.