After studying industrial design
at Pratt and interning with Kon-
stantin Grcic in Munich, Jona-
than Olivares, 27, returned home to Boston
in 2006 to start his own design firm. Lacking
clients, the entrepreneur set up shop in his
mother’s garage, figuring it would take five
years to get started. Less than a year later, he
was in new digs with a staff of four, having
landed projects for Danese Milano, Artemide,
and Driade, as well as a teaching job at the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Olivares first stole attention with Smith, a rolling home/office cart with seven functions. He began by studying relevant behavioral modes, questioning the norms of office culture and spying on people via Flickr to see how they used desks. “There’s no easy
definition of what desks are today,” he says, which is how Smith, made of folded-and-riveted sheet metal, became a multifunctional platform. “I’m not against file cabinets and tables, but I’m more interested in designing furniture from a DNA level,” he adds.
Olivares is now working on a revolving bookcase for Driade and a portable reading lamp for Artemide that uses solar power and LEDs. He’s a writer as well; his forthcoming Knoll-funded book will examine the technical history of office chairs. Writing is like the design process, he says, a way “to analyze and assess the topic and make judgments.” But he doesn’t always know where the discovery process will lead: “The exciting part is to chase the unknown.” www.jonathanolivares.com
— ERNEST BECK
Smith, Olivares’s rolling cart for Danese, grew out of the designer’s research into the way people work.
LOCATION: Cambridge, Mass. / BEST-KNOWN PROJECT: Smith, a multifunctional home/office cart / BIGGEST CREATIVE INSPIRATION: The writings of George Nelson / GOAL FOR THE YEAR 2020: Running a design firm with a multidisciplinary staff / WOULD RATHER DIE THAN DESIGN: “Something my staff and I don’t believe in”
One view of Ohno’s Duras Ambient boutique in Funabashi City
“Westerners are amazed at the
simplicity of Japanese rooms…
but it betrays a failure to com-
prehend the mystery of shadows,” wrote
Japanese literary great Junichiro Tanizaki
in 1933. The comment could well apply to
the work of Chikara Ohno, director of the
Tokyo-based firm Sinato and an architect and
interior designer. His innovative furnishings
and a palette of light and shadow alter the
apparent volume and mood of his spaces.
Like many of his generation, the Osaka-born Ohno, 32, rejects a signature style. “My work has nothing you could describe as a trademark aesthetic,” he says. “I doubt received ideas about the form a space should take. Then I try to create a new state of space—where you can’t tell what is unconventional, but you feel something different.”
For Rei restaurant in Tokyo, Ohno added a ceiling of overlapping elliptical wooden panels, backlit to add depth and to veil certain areas he wished to hide. For fashion boutique Duras Ambient in Funabashi City, he used tall triangular hangers, arranged like the teeth of a comb, and lit them on one side so they cast bold shafts of gray across the floor. “I use surfaces to create spatial ambiguity, and lighting is one way of achieving that,” he says.
While Ohno has worked primarily as an interior designer, his Table House, a renovation of a 120-year-old wooden dwelling in Shiga Prefecture, exhibits a similar mastery of light and a sympathetic approach to Japanese traditions. Confident and impressively original, Ohno is destined for much attention, but don’t be surprised if he avoids the spotlight. www.sinato.jp — GORDON KANKI KNIGHT
LOCATION: Tokyo / BEST-KNOWN PROJECT: Duras Ambient boutique / BIGGEST CREATIVE INSPIRATION: “Words. When I write about my work, random thoughts are united and become the inspiration for my next project.” / GOAL FOR THE YEAR 2020: “I have too much in front of me right now!” / WOULD RATHER DIE THAN DESIGN...: “I’d even design a 100-Yen shop if I could do it my way.”
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