Handle With Care
The London Design Biennale 2018 took the theme of ‘Emotional States’, which explored questions and ideas about sustainability, migration, pollution, energy, cities, and social equality through the lens of design, and the impact of these issues on our emotional states. Among the showcases and spectacles presented during the three-week event was an installation by Panasonic Design that prompted visitors to reconsider their relationship with everyday objects.
Titled Kasa, the installation invited visitors into a dark room populated by five delicate lighting objects that glowed and behaved like bioluminescent creatures. Approach the objects too abruptly or handle them too aggressively and their lights would dim and fade away, plunging the room into darkness. Approach and handle the objects with care and they would stay aglow.
Care and reverence are not typical of the way in which one treats everyday electronic home appliances; these objects are designed with multiple layers of reinforcement to protect them from rough handling, yet they are considered disposable and often replaced so quickly, observed Takehiro Ikeda, Creative Director of Panasonic Design and Director of Panasonic FLUX.
Panasonic Design was founded in 1951 as the first-ever in-house design department in a Japanese electronics company. FLUX is Panasonic’s satellite studio that focuses on future innovations, insights, design strategy and storytelling.
Kasa is the latest in a series of experimental projects from Kyoto KADEN
Lab, a collaborative R&D initiative of Panasonic Design, and GO ON, a group of traditional Kyoto craftspeople. Japan’s revered cultural capital, Kyoto is the brand new home to Panasonic’s head office as of 2018 – a year that marks the company’s hundredth year in business.
The Kyoto KADEN Lab projects are an effort to re-establish an emotional connection with home appliances. Says the studio of Kasa, “This [project] may offer an opportunity to rethink manufacturing or change people’s behaviour. The aim is to create an experiential probe into the future relationship between people and objects.”