Takashi Sugimoto – författare

"We do not live only with clear-cut forms; rather, we exist in a world of forms that are often indistinct and vague." —Takashi Sugimoto, architect and James Beard Award-winning authorSuper Potato Design presents the work of internationally-renowned Japanese designer Takashi Sugimoto. After studying metal sculpture at Tokyo University of Fine Arts, Sugimoto began his career designing a series of bars and restaurants including the iconic Radio Bar that became a favorite hangout for designers like Issey Miyake, Ikko Tanaka, Yohji Yamamoto and Tadao Ando. He was soon recruited to design retail spaces including the original Muji "no-brand" shops along with hotels, tea ceremony spaces and wedding chapels.Super Potato's striking interiors have totally revolutionized Japanese design through the use of exposed concrete surfaces, rough-hewn timber and unevenly cut stone juxtaposed with salvaged metal and repurposed objects to create a sense of power and timelessness. The design vocabulary created by Sugimoto is universally imitated today (in Japan and throughout the world). It is what we now think of as "modern Japanese design," although Sugimoto's own work has never been surpassed.Super Potato Design presents 40 of Sugimoto's most important projects in 320 full-color photographs by Yoshio Shiratori, who has worked with the designer since the beginning. Author and architect Mira Locher introduces Sugimoto's work and provides a thorough description for each project. A foreword by Tadao Ando and discussions with architect Kiyoshi Sey Takeyama and graphic designer Kenya Hara explore the direction of Japanese design today. A list of Super Potato's complete works rounds off this fascinating book.

Recipient of the 2004 James Beard Award for Best Photography!This innovative Japanese cookbook takes you on a tour of the restaurants and philosophy at the forefront of the Japanese cooking revolution. Just as Alice Waters changed the way Americans thought about food, Takashi Sugimoto has revolutionized the act of dining in Japan.Shunju: New Japanese Cuisine brings you the experience of dining at Tokyo''s most innovative and exciting restaurants: Shunju. Everything about these restaurants is unique—their design, decoration, and lighting—but most especially the cuisine. At the Shunju restaurants the menu changes with the seasons and the specials change daily depending on what is available from the market. The chefs choose from hand-picked farmed and wild vegetables that arrive each morning. The food, though quintessentially Japanese, is fresh and innovative, with unexpected touches from other cuisines.The restaurants'' designs are modern, funky, and often quite bizarre. Sugimoto, the famed interior designer, has incorporated such unusual installations as original sidewalk gratings from the London subway and hand plastered mud walls. In this way, the designs represent the new lifestyle philosophy of Japan''s urban, cultivated youth: that within the chaotic city of modern design and Japanese food, more value should be placed on nature and time, on the textures of genuine materials, the flavors of natural foods.Stunning photographs, shot on location throughout the four seasons, and modern Japanese recipes that are as beautiful in presentation as they are to taste, make Shunju: New Japanese Cuisine a must for both professional chefs and dedicated amateurs.Sections include:The Seasonal KitchenSpring foodsSummer foodsAutumn foodsWinter foods