Six Designart Tokyo 2026 Projects Make Assembly and Waste Visible

By Elena Vasquez

Designart Tokyo 2026 opened on 30 October with around 150 projects from exhibitors in 13 countries. The 10th-anniversary festival remains open across Tokyo until 8 November 2026. Projects occupy galleries and other pop-up locations throughout the city.

The main exhibition venue occupies the former Tokyo Expressway site, also known as the KK Line, part of which now forms an elevated park in the heart of Ginza. Designart Tokyo has also opened its first dedicated design store at the main site. It sells works by Nendo and Alessi, alongside designs by Ronan Bouroullec and Kwangho Lee. The festival's anniversary edition thus combines a citywide exhibition with a dedicated retail outlet.

How does Nomura make a bond reversible?

Nomura, a Tokyo studio, presents Pulling Apart in the Daikanyama exhibition Separation: Designed to Come Apart. The new adhesive joins a group of products designed for fluid disassembly and recycling. Nomura says adhesives on timber or metal can leave permanent marks or prevent recycling. Nomura describes the material as strong, flexible tape that firmly grips heavy materials.

Once tugged, the tape stretches and separates without force. Nomura said: “Leave one end within reach behind the plinth or under the tabletop, and when the time comes, a single pull undoes the whole thing.”

Aica Kogyo Company developed the bonding technology used in the tape. The prototype remains in development. In practical terms, Nomura treats removal as part of the joining process.

What can an accordion lamp do with light?

Howdunit, an experimental design studio, presents Peco Poco, a table lamp with a collapsible shade. Named for a common Japanese onomatopoeia for a growling stomach, the lamp translates that sound into a repeated, accordion-like unfolding gesture controlled by a small hook. Delicate layers of gauzy textile form the shade. The light opens with a rhythmic peco poco motion and can rest at various heights.

Founders Haruto Kamijo and Sho Tasaki said: “By continually asking how things are made, we aim to discover new possibilities in design.” Movement, rather than a fixed sculptural form, becomes the lamp's central design variable.

How does Oji Holdings frame a managed forest?

Oji Holdings, a Tokyo paper manufacturer, presents Forest: Perspectives in Ginza. The company commissioned nine professionals—from designers and wood specialists to a writer and chef—to visit the network of forests it manages and share their individual responses to the terrain.

Among the responses are delicately whittled spoons made from fallen branches. Wood sheets emerge from bark through a process resembling washi-paper making. We+ designed the encyclopedic display. The local studio was founded by Toshiya Hayashi and Hokuto Ando. Forest management becomes a public, multidisciplinary conversation about material use.

Why turn a paper box into architecture?

21B Studio, a Tokyo-based practice founded in 2021, presents Box at Shibuya's brutalist-style Tiers Gallery. Box is the young studio's first solo show. The exhibition treats the humble paper box as a field for formal invention, testing how folds and incisions can produce many different containers and structures.

The studio distributes an intricately designed flatpack poster advertising the exhibition. Once assembled, the poster resembles Tiers Gallery's geometric architecture. Box recasts the paper box as a source of sculptural and architectural possibilities.

Can deep-fried paper work as a finish?

Design master's student Cecil Nabenashi presents Tempura Object at Tokyo Midtown. The playful display contains vases and bowls made from deep-fried paper and fibres. Tempura inspired the project: the Japanese food is coated in batter and deep-fried in oil.

His experimental method uses a specially developed blend of non-edible ingredients as a batter, and he aims to test whether it can provide a long-lasting finish for design objects. Nabenashi plans his next challenge to be a deep-fried garment. His project gives food preparation a new role in testing durable surfaces.

How do manufacturers make familiar products strange?

Industrial Romanticism occupies Minato's Axis Gallery, Japan's first dedicated design gallery. Axis Gallery was founded in 1981. Designers Yoshiki Matsuyama and Ryota Yokozeki hold the group exhibition.

The group show brings together eight leading Japanese companies, including bathroom brand Toto and camera maker Fujifilm, through prototypes that imaginatively revise familiar products. In-house designers at each company created the prototypes. Ryusuke Baba, of musical instrument maker Yamaha, created the featured piano. Baba used pieces of timber normally rejected for an instrument. The resulting keyboard produces an offbeat sound. Industrial Romanticism makes manufacturing decisions visible through recognisable products given imaginative twists.

Designart Tokyo 2026 closes on 8 November. By then, visitors will have the final chance to see Nomura's prototype tape; Nabenashi's next test, a deep-fried garment, remains a plan rather than a finished object.