A nice chat with designer Takahashi

I had the pleasure of having a nice chat with furniture designer So Takahashi during New York Design Week.

I learned that Mr. Takahashi started as a graphics designer first, but always had a passion for sculpting and forms. This passion eventually led to his first major work in furniture, the Origami Chair. The Origami Chair is playful yet technical with the hard angles used to mimic the fold lines of Japanese origami. Takahashi describes his journey with the Origami Chair as one that started out as just having fun. The Origami Chair took off and as Takahashi would say himself, “the rest is history”.

Mr. Takahashi gets a lot of inspiration from the city he lives in, New York. For example, the bends on the legs of this stool (below) is inspired by the flattened pipes that you see but don’t really notice in a metropolis with lots of history like New York City.

Another work of Takahashi’s that is very interesting is the Mage Stool, which stacks up in circular rotation.

From Takahashi’s works, you can tell that he is inspired by angles and things that can take on multiple shapes and forms.