Making furniture with love and simplicity

The name of the design-group and workshop we introduce today may be a little misleading: SuperRobot is not a cyber-technology-crazy project, but instead a very friendly collaboration of architect Keiji Ashizawa and his friends at the workshop. Together they design, invent and build their ideas in “real time design speed” right next door. It is a small, ambitious project creating stunning works with very little.

written by Uleshka

This was recorded while eating blueberry cake.

Keiji - you have your own architectural practice but still collaborate with SuperRobot a lot. What is your main part at SuperRobot?

Keiji: SuperRobot started getting into exhibitions and showing the works that we produced at things like Design Week in Tokyo. In 2002 I discovered the Design for Europe exhibition in Kortrijk, Belgium which seemed to be looking for international designers. I didn’t really expect much from it (since nobody I knew ever heard about Kortrijk) but still went to show some of our works. That was the first time I introduced SuperRobots at international fairs. I was amazed by the feedback we got and also overwhelmed to see what high profile designers exhibited their works there.

That is how - apart from being a designer - I sort of became SuperRobot’s press person, too.

In what way do you collaborate?

Keiji: When I design a house for a client, for example, SuperRobot would join in to make the stairs, furniture, windows and doors. The reason why we collaborate is, because it makes designing easier for both of us: we can communicate and inspire each other very well. When collaborating, we can also control costs more easily. Something like: “I don’t have much money this time but I can pay you more next time. Promise! (laugh!)

SuperRobot is a design office and a workshop/factory all in one. Why do you think it is important to build the products yourself?

Hosokawa: Besides building prototypes and models for clients in our workshop, we always enjoy being able to take our designs straight into reality and try them out rather than letting the design stop on a paper-base, waiting for someone to build and market them one day. We are very free to build what ever we like, because we have the skill and the space. That is very liberating!

gas for welding and other fun

pinches, screws, metal bars, circular saw…

Keiji: Yes, besides Super Robot can make things very quickly that way. There isn’t much fuzz in between. I find that there aren’t many people making prototypes by themselves nowadays, which is a shame. If you know how to actually build your products and feel the texture, you can learn so much for your work. I just love it and it is actually very simple and natural that we do it.

How would you describe the way you design? Do you design first and then spot the mistakes when building a prototype, or is it more like playing around with materials and then suddenly an idea pops up?

Hosokawa: Sometimes the drawing comes first but there is also the other way round. Mostly it is a back and forth from the office to the workshop back to the office to the workshop….

We make things in “real time”, you could say. From the drawing to the product is almost like a live performance: you watch the object grow.

starting from a flat steel sheet…

three dimensional shapes evolve…

Coming to your products! You created a whole range called “FPS - Flat Packing System”. What was the idea behind that?

Keiji: FPS is an attempt to discover the hidden properties of steel and to find new ways of thinking about furniture and its production. The process is quite simple. We simply cut, drill, or perforate a thin sheet of steel (about 1.6mm thick) with a laser cutter. At first, we were surprised about how easily a sheet of steel could be bent along a perforated line… just like Origami!

But don’t those bended lines or joints break after a while?

Hosokawa: We call these life joint, or life hinge. If you don’t keep bending it around repeatedly, it performs with sufficient strength, but certainly after a long “life” of bending it will break eventually one day.

These laser-cut-sheets are already really graphic and beautiful to look at! Amazing! Is it hard to make those chairs out of the steel sheet at home?

Hosokawa: No, all you actually need is to attach the parts with some aluminum rivets or normal screws. Done! - and very stable. We also have some variations with aluminum and wood - since the aluminum sheet itself wouldn’t be strong enough. For most FPS products we use the most ordinary steel sheet size 919mm x 1829mm - which is the size of one Japanese tatami.

FPS chairs from a laser cut steel sheet forming beautiful graphics, Photo: Kozo Takayama

FPS bathroom possibilities, Photo: Daici Ano

Where can you actually buy those? And how much would the red chair for example be?

Keiji: Most of these are order made and the chair will be about 40 000 Yen! Cheap, for an order made product, hm? (smiles!)

a FPS shelf… Photo: Muga Miyahara

…transforming back into a flat sheet, Photo: Muga Miyahara

So looking at these shelves… can you actually make them flat again when moving houses for example?

Keiji: Yes! When we exhibited at Designmai - most of our products could be flattened again after the exhibition was over! Very convenient for traveling (laughs!).

That was actually also our title for the exhibition: flat / volume.

textile chair transforming to a 6 meter long bench

I like this other chair you introduced at Designmai, too but don’t quite understand, how it works!?

Hosokawa: I wanted to make a chair only from textile - and we like the idea of transformation. We came up with these 6 meter long cushions, which can function as a long bench for people to lounge on, but which could also be folded together and zipped up on the sides transforming to one perfectly strong chair.

Keiji: Yes, and if you un-zip it again, the inside literally pops out, almost like intestines! (laughs) Those inner cushions are covered with rough buckskin, too. Unfortunately this one was really expensive to produce (and the technical drawings took forever).

It looks like you extended the idea of the long cushions with your carpet chairs, which are a hybrid of interior design and furniture!

Hosokawa: We wanted to change the use of the carpet, which is usually only used on the floor, and turn that into a chair. It was just a very simple idea: steel and carpet!

carpet chairs exhibited at Designmai Berlin, Photo: Taro Mizutani

carpet chairs exhibited at Designmai Berlin, Photo: Taro Mizutani

Playful simplicity seems to be one of your keywords. I also find that some of your projects have an almost weightless feel about them: your office furniture or the home office 302 in Shibuya you built for a private client.

Keiji: Being simple is important - and is often all that is left naturally. There are often too many demands from your clients: they want this and that and more of those… but then there is no budget to match! So our skill must be to skim and slice off what is not necessary and find out the essentials of what we really need to realize that project. That then becomes our design.

Keiji: I think it is like making a Japanese Haiku: you start with 100 characters to express what you mean and then need to skim those again and again until you have only 17 characters left in the end expressing it all.

What are these cages you used to build a house with?

Keiji: This is one of my architectural projects. The task was to build a house for a couple on a very small site: only 30 square meters to build on!

So we created a frame unit out of the cheapest steel you can get and stuck them onto each other. This small 4 storey house creates about 100 square meters, has a garden on the roof and a parking space integrated. Kitchen, bedroom, guest room, living room and bedroom - hardly any walls. The clients were really happy!

wall and floor structure inside the box-house, Photo: Daici Ano

4 storey house from the outside with car park and roof terrace, Photo: Daici Ano

For sure! Looks like a nice place to live! Thanks a lot for the lovely interview and if anyone needs some order-made furniture in Tokyo - now you know where ;-)

11 Comments

1. Nice. Seems good fun.

   Posted by: Germán W. on May 6th, 2006 at 7:52 am

2. Brilliant 4 storey house!

   Posted by: Ezwan on May 6th, 2006 at 4:28 pm

3. Great article Keiji and Tetsuya! Gambatte ne!
   Best wishes to you from London

   Posted by: Luke Chandresinghe on May 8th, 2006 at 11:07 pm

4. Thank you for reading our article,Luke.
   Also thanks for nice article,Uleshka-san.
   It’s good for me not to focus just product,but to do our work style.

   Posted by: Keiji Ashizawa on May 9th, 2006 at 2:43 pm

5. Is the furniture avaliable in Indonesia :) I just love the Purple chair.

   Posted by: Kuswanto on May 10th, 2006 at 10:47 pm

6. thanks to Keiji Ashizawa & Uleshka, nice works; & learn much from your philosophy

   best wishes fm hk

   Posted by: sy on May 21st, 2006 at 1:43 am

7. Great article. The four storey house is amazing!

   Posted by: joost on May 22nd, 2006 at 9:15 pm

8. [...] Imagine one truck delivering a few thousand chairs.  SUPER-ROBOT brought this to my mind with their Flat Packing System.  Sheets are precut and perforated to be bent along what they call life hinges with some screws required.  Basically it is giant, functioning steel origami.  The sheets are a work of art by themselves.  There is more to see at their site, and a great interview with them at PingMag as well. [...]

   Posted by: cardboardmonocle.com » Blog Archive » Flat Packing System: It’s Flat! on October 3rd, 2006 at 3:48 am

9. hi
   it is nice to found desigen’s good and tecnologhey in same time
   iam so happpy to found that way of desigenes
   iam amr and iam eng of intriour disgner also have afactory to make any kind of plastic
   iwould like to visit your company and factory for making bussnies
   iwould like to take your desigen’s to cairo
   so told me how can ido that
   mean you agreee about what to get place here in cairo and put your making and your name
   or buy it in japan and get them to cairo and put my name on it
   also it willl be happpy to visit japaan and see your tecnologey
   beast wishes for more good desigen’s
   my eamil is
   amreltorky@yahoo.com
   hope to get answear from you
   thanx

   Posted by: amr on December 19th, 2006 at 3:22 am

10. simple is always the best!

    Posted by: thomas gathman gallery on October 30th, 2007 at 9:14 am

11. it is the best. thanks for subject

    Posted by: kurye on February 23rd, 2008 at 8:46 am

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