Tokyo, Japan
Kawakami Design Room along with Hida Sangyo, headquartered in Hida Takayama—one of the most famous places in Japan for wooden furniture—have created the Kisaragi collection that is an ode to classic wooden furniture design.
Kisaragi means “the renewal of plants” in Japanese and this collection is named for its loving treatment of Japanese cedar.
Kisaragi furniture has been recently awarded the 2022 Prize Designs for Modern Furniture and Lighting Award from Global Design News and The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design.
Cedar planting began in the late 1400s, it was planted in the areas where they planned to build Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines in order to ensure the supply of lumber for those structures.
Due to the wood’s high affinity for moisture and its pleasant fragrance, it is used for housing, boat frames, buckets, and so on.
Cedar has always been involved in various aspects of the Japanese lifestyle.
The Japanese government’s postwar policy is responsible for the fact that a large proportion of the country is now covered in cedar.
Cedar was the government’s choice of tree for mass planting in the forests that were devastated in World War II, given that it grows rapidly and helps ensure the supply of building materials.
The steam compression technique was developed in order to overcome this drawback.
Hida Sangyo played an important role in this invention with its “wood bending” technique, which was developed and improved over 90 years.
In recent years, it has become possible to strengthen and mold cedar wood by employing heat, moisture and pressure without the use of chemicals.
This technology is known as “high-pressure steam compression.”
KISARAGI is made of an innovative material known as “straight-grained, compressed cedar wood.” This new material is the result of years of research and development.
Furniture produced through compression methods prior to the invention of the new technique typically had a knotty, burled grain.
he new technique, however, meets the challenge of achieving a straight, clear grain, which is of course a prized characteristic of cedar.
Project: Kisaragi Furniture Collection
Designers: Kawakami Design Room
Lead Designer: Motomi Kawakami
Manufacturer: Hida Sangyo Co., Ltd.
Photographer: Masayuki Hayashi
