ENCOUNTER WITH MUJI IN CHINA [英文版通稿]

ZHU E  
[ MUJI CHINA EXHIBITION2008 CURATOR ]

The real prosperity of current China comes from its rich variety and this variety provides a valuable platform to showcase Mujirushi Royhin’s wisdoms and imaginations. The real significance of MUJI 2008 China Exhibition is that it will be an exhibition that gives inspirations to the Chinese designers and the industry as well as enhancing their abilities to discover China’s potential originality. The analysis of Mujirushi Ryohin’s character is supposed to shed a light on the Chinese designers and the industry and show them that only when they position themselves into the unique Chinese culture of their own can they have real breakthroughs. For me, the whole purpose of organizing this event is to remind the Chinese designers and the industry of their own culture and value and hope that they’ll be inspired by Mujirushi Ryohin and rediscover their own values.

Accustomed to Social Needs
Times change, but the value of design should never. For the past few decades, we create and we discard for ourselves and for pure economic growth. But now it’s time to think about the resources, the environment, to think about different understandings and other issues. Designers alone don’t create goods. They discover needs and design for these needs to satisfy the society. The characteristics of a design are decided by social needs and the designers must take into consideration of the social environment when designing a product.

Being Simple
Mujirushi Ryohin showcases a very typical Japanese aesthetic style. The excellence of its design lies in its pursuit of simplicity, openness and honesty. Daily designs could be easy victims of metaphorization of certain objects, but no in Mujirushi Ryohin’s case. Its’ whole existence is like a simple record of life and time.

Beijing Nameless
Repeated use of an object makes it a tool. Similarly, designs should also have a strong purpose. Designs with a strong purpose and those popular but without a purpose are very different in nature. If one design takes promotion as the goal, the designer will only think about the elements that are popular with the public. All that in his mind will be how to attract and please the public. But if a design is to create something of real use, it will gain favor from others and usually copiers. The copiers will help spread the design through imitation. This kind of design is not famous, but very influential. In a word, design won’t have to be a blockbuster, but it has to be a creation of strong purpose.

Being Daily
In the current motley living environment, Mujirushi Ryohin is serving us something ‘daily’ to our knowledge, something appears so frequent that we feel its existence so natural. ‘Daily’ is not something new or unknown. Brushing our teeth is something daily, washing the dishes also. In a word, it’s something we don’t necessarily notice its existence. Mujirushi Ryohin is providing extremely daily products, but its thoughts and designs gained through careful and exact observations of daily life makes people reconsider and rediscover the design of daily products and daily life itself as well. Mujirushi Ryohin, through its daily designs, is helping people to rediscover the wisdoms hidden in common daily life and the value of design in real life.

Showing Perspectives
Designs, in the pursuit of originality, should also aspires to modesty and plainness and adapt to peoples’ daily lives. Without this modesty and plainness, designs will not survive the change of times. A designer should have perspectives of his own and reflect his own thoughts, positions, ideas in his works. The exhibition is by design to test and measure the potentials of the exhibited designs from different point of views. Designer should have a long term perspective, review the past and forecast the future form of culture. We have no idea of being simple when in a state of underdevelopment, but now facing a world of extreme material abundance, with growing products appearing in different designs, consumers are losing sight of and can’t find what they really need. As designers, it’s now time to reflect the question ‘what’s the best design for real life’.