Abstract

Shiro Kuramata, an internationally-acclaimed, Japanese interior and furniture designer, was active from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. The minimal nature of his spaces was created by his use of eloquent lighting, glass, and plastic that was also a reflection of the traditional Japanese love of austerity. Kuramata’s own words, however, reveal that his childhood memories were an important source of inspiration for his work. His recollections from the war in particular led him to produce unusual spaces in which the subtle use of light led to a sense of both beauty and unease. This bizarre juxtaposition can also be found in Kuramata’s attempt to reconstruct the act of evacuating in an air raid. What he recalled was not the fear of the experience, but the extraordinary spectacle of empty, sun-drenched spaces in which the air-raid siren wailed. This sums up the young Kuramata’s unconscious attempts to escape the gloomy situation and take refuge in happier thoughts. Such extraordinary childhood experiences must have contributed to his interior design, which, though purely abstract, contains a tinge of fear or loneliness. The article analyzes how Kuramata sublimated his childhood experiences into such an idiosyncratic form of abstract design.