Kent
a^ Has
egawacaptured the attention of the likes of Nike,
for which Motogi and team dressed the walls
of the Nike Ateliair exhibition in Tokyo with
ordinary bubble wrap.
DDAA has played with the bound-
ary between revealing and concealing in a
cross-disciplinary context from the outset.
Although he trained as an architect, Motogi
launched his studio with the release of two
products: seats, to be specific. ‘I was thinking
about space and architecture while design-
ing products,’ he says. ‘My early projects
were important training that allowed me to
consider product design and architecture
equally, without borders in between.’ Lost
in Sofa celebrates an armchair’s ability to
inadvertently consume the contents of its
user’s pockets. The product’s playful surface
doubles as storage for ‘books, a vase – what-
ever you like’.
While Motogi’s initial products did
fulfil a function, he saw them as pieces of
puzzles that only the users could complete.
Designs that leave room for personal inter-
vention – a bit like architecture, you might
say. Motogi is not alone in his thinking,
especially when it comes to those trying
to push architectural conventionality by
dabbling in atypical activities. The words
of Kjetil Thorsen, cofounder of famed
multi disciplinary firm Snøhetta (Frame 116,
p. 89), spring to mind: ‘Architecture is really
about people and not architecture.’ Perhaps
the focus on a personal scale is something
Motogi picked up during the six-year
stint at Schemata Architects that followed
his graduation. It’s a sentiment Schemata
founder Jo Nagasaka has long propounded,
whether the studio’s output be a piece of
furniture, an interior or a large-scale build-
ing. Like Nagasaka, DDAA’s definition of
luxury is about reducing excess, not creating
it. Motogi ‘finds pleasure in every aspect of
design’ while trying to improve the envi-
ronment. Materials, production methods –
sometimes less is more, he says. ‘The world
is already full of stuff.’
That’s one reason why DDAA
decided to keep its architectural interven-
tions to a minimum for Dappled House, a
renovation project in Tokyo. The building
was constructed during the height of Japan’s
‘bubble economy’ and bore explicit signs of
the seemingly unlimited wealth that marked
the period. In 2017, DDAA tackled the build-
ing’s 100-m^2 first floor, complete with »‘Luxury is about reducing
excess, not creating it’
Details at Avex Dance Studio in Aoyama
offer a fresh take on luxury. Bright-blue
LAN cables are glorified behind a layer of
glass (above), and furniture features gold-
plated scaffolding pipes (below).56 PORTRAITS