visitors interacting with the ‘flower petals’ image © designboom

at 100% design tokyo, TOTO ltd., presented a project they had done in collaboration with different japanese universities and architect sou fujimoto who acted as project director. workshops were lead that were run between university students and TOTO ltd., which revolved around the theme of the environment, health and healing. the purpose of the workshops was to get participants to think about our relationship with water by producing water-related objects that considered a new lifestyle revolving around the natural resource. the result were ‘water tables’ designed by eight different student teams.

tokyo design week 08: TOTO project ‘floating flower’ by aya masudome, ozomi kunimura and haruka okada from the university of tsukuba image © designboom

coasters of water act like floating petals on a solid ‘puddle’. you were invited to play and experience a different way of interacting with water.

tokyo design week 08: TOTO project ‘ . ‘ by asako oguri, masayo fujiwara and rena mizuno from joshibi university of art and design image © designboom

tokyo design week 08: TOTO project ‘ . ‘ had holes in the surface of the table in which water could pool into image © designboom

tokyo design week 08: TOTO project ‘table of gravel’ by akiko okamura, sou kojima, takaya satou from nippon design college image © designboom

the table is a contained puddle of water which controls the gravel that sits inside. visitors are asked to play with the water and gravel.

tokyo design week 08: TOTO project ‘the world at the bottom of the water’ by tomoaki takemura, rina akahide and hiroki yano from creative design college image © designboom

the students behind this table were looking at the characteristics of a puddle and how each one has its own little world growing inside of it. some have soil, plants, creature, while others are big, small, deep or shallow.

tokyo design week 08: TOTO project the table’s various water levels image © designboom

tokyo design week 08: TOTO project ‘blank table’ by ayumi sonoda, hiroyuki nakahta and mami kawasaki from kyoto seika university image © designboom

‘blank’ explores the space between objects on a table. the areas in between change as it fills with water, with some objects naturally moving on their own while others are manually relocated.

tokyo design week 08: TOTO project the ‘blank table’ top is made up of a mosaic of transparent square tiles image © designboom

tokyo design week 08: TOTO project installation of the water tables which were part of TOTO project image © designboom

more TOTO: http://www.toto.co.jp 100% design tokyo: http://www.100percentdesign.jp