発見, hakken: a finding. This is a record of what one designer notices in a week.

I grew up beside the Arakawa, in Adachi, and spent five years in a Ginza studio drawing identities for companies you have used without once thinking about them. That work teaches you to read a city as a page. A vending machine is set type. A rice bag is a packaging problem somebody solved in the eighties and nobody has improved on since. A good deal of the best design in Japan is like that: already in the street, unsigned, waiting to be looked at properly.

So this magazine watches the street as well as the feed. Around fifty sources come in through the day, ten of them Japanese, and what the world's studios are arguing about is counted and plotted so you can watch it move. Every third day I write about one thing I actually stood in front of.

What you get for a story is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the way out to the people who reported it. Never the article itself, and never the photograph as though it were ours. A story written in Japanese stays in Japanese here, headline and excerpt both, because that is how its author set it down.

Everything is also published in Japanese at hakkenmag.com/ja/.

— Ren Arakawa, Tokyo

← Hakken 週ごとのアーカイブ

Dezeen

SWA implements modular "toolkit" for a more walkable Houston

11月5日

Landscape architecture studio SWA has designed a modular system including petal-shaped shade structures, outdoor lighting and planting beds that can be deployed around the city in an effort to create…

Dezeenで読む ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

SWA implements modular "toolkit" for a more walkable Houston

Dezeenの他の記事

Fragile lighting collection by Marset among 15 new products on Dezeen Showroom Dezeen

Six standout projects unveiled at Designart Tokyo 2026 Dezeen

Design Doha Biennial 2026 set to explore how traditional crafts can shape the future of design Dezeen

Concept car that transforms from SUV to pickup is "a symbol of freedom" says Fiat CEO Dezeen

Lapalma presents a cross-section of its catalogue on Dezeen Showroom Dezeen

Inaugural Walker Design Triennial features flesh-like speakers and post-apocalyptic scenes Dezeen