Isao Hosoe, Corraini and Gruppo Loccioni get together for Play40, a game that moves ideas by generating new ones.
Isao Hosoe’s studio is a mix of notes and sketches where places are cultures come together. Past and future, memory and innovation, nature and culture meet up, with a craft feeling, like a kid’s room.
Born in Tokyo in 1942, Isao Hosoe designed Play40, a double pack of 40 cards: one pack has a word and a picture and the other the same words and a short comment. Plus there are four blank cards. This is all you needs to discover new ideas by associating words, pictures, sensations and personal experiences. Isao Hosoe invented the method, applying it in particular to his work with everyone responsible for the creation and success of ideas - designers, technical staff and managers. Play40 is the PlayFactory’s game. It is an exercise that shows the ideas that count, how they are associated with one another, and which hold the key to obtaining what we want.
Isao Hosoe told us about this adventure about the playful element in the workplace, with one of his closest collaborators - industrial designer Lorenzo De Bartolomeis.
What is the realtion between Play Factory and Play Office?
The book Playoffice, toward a new culture in the workplace was published when I organized the exhibition “Incontri di lavoro: domesticità nell’ufficio” at the Triennale of Milan in 2001 with Domus Academy. The book was only distributed in Japan in partnership with Itoki. Ann Marinelli, Renata Sias and I believe the workplace is a meeting place for people, where innovation and design can mix towards the future.
What is the new design in this field?
The human being is always at the centre, but the human being is not part of a close circuit. The same goes for the machine: it can have a relation with the human being, but this is purely connected to function, there is no “friendship”. The machine has to become a tool, like a hammer, a screwdriver or a knife. The transformation becomes innovation. Today, computers have become the main tool. Play Factory proposes to be careful and focus on the tool, to touch the tool and use the senses.
What is the relation between the Play40 cards and design?
Playing with Play40 helps thinking and organizing ideas, considering both quantity and quality. In design, memory is a key element: this is the reason why we have inserted certain words that we may forget about, that we may not “see”. The world is becoming very complicated and, even if the design sector considers memory, most people do not worry about delving into subjects.
What would you suggest to companies and manufacturers?
I suggest they play, as playing is a fundamental dimension for companies and manufacturers. 2500 years ago, Lao-Tze discovered how emptiness was necessary to movement: the Italian translation of the Japanese word “Asobi” (vacant) is “vacation”… This is the reason why people like the word! We need empty times, times to play, and innovation really comes from playing.
What would you suggest to young designers?
I suggest them to be curious, as the most important thing is to keep alive the vibration between human being and tools: this is design, too. I remember one of my first design works, the lamp Heby (designed for Valenti in 1970): we did not invent anything, all the elements came from the factory and we just put them together.
Any plans for Milan Design Week?
We are probably going to comunicate the concept of Play Factory, maybe an event where we ask people to use cards and try Play40 in multidisciplinary groups.
Bachelor of Science (1965) and Master of Science (1967) in Aerospace Engineering from the Nihon University of Tokyo (with the project “The Man Powered Aircraft”), Isao Hosoe has been living in Milan since 1967. He collaborated with Arch. Alberto Rosselli of the Studio Ponti-Fornaroli-Rosselli from 1967 to 1974. Member of A.D.I. (Italian Association of Industrial Designers), of S.I.E. (Italian Society of Ergonomics), of the Japan Design Committee, and of the Japan Interior Design Forum. He has been professor of Industrial Design at the Politecnico of Milan and at the Università degli Studi, La Sapienza of Rome.
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