HARA Kenya, Designing Japan: A Future Built on Aesthetics.
HARA Kenya is one of the most influential designers working today. A theoretician as well as a practitioner of contemporary design, he is responsible for the success of some of Japan’s most beloved product brands, such as MUJI.
In Designing Japan, A Future Built on Aesthetics, Hara sensei explains his belief in a society built upon innovative design where government, industry, and designers collaborate to bring out the best in the world around us and ourselves. Behind this vision stands his belief in the power of human desire.
What I find insightful from Hara’s thinking for Christian living is his understanding that human desire is the energy behind leading a good life. Human desire when informed and intelligently directed towards the shaping of the world around us awakens further desire and inspiration to live better. The process of good design is a feedback loop that raises both our standards of living as well as our consciousness.
“Interacting with well-thought-out designs induces awakening, from which changes in our desires arise, resulting in modifications to patterns of consumption, resource utilization, and finally, lifestyle.”
Desires can be intelligently influenced, in Hara’s words, “educated.” Changes and modifications can be made to my desires, which is the essence of design. By educating my desires I enter into a creative process that seeks to bring those desires to their best possible expression in the real world. When I have informed my desires through reason and aesthetics, I can discover their most beautiful form so as “to create quality products and environments.”
St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, in a sixteenth-century manner, expressed the same view. Desires scrutinized, sifted, and worked upon are the soil from which a beautiful life grows.
Practically, this means sitting down with myself to identify my deepest desires. Follow through by playing creatively with them through the use of the imagination, scripture reading and prayer, as well as through discreet and trusted conversation with others to judge the direction in which they are pointing me. The next step is to spot the many ways in which a desire can find fulfillment, that is, come to expression by taking concrete action. The quality of my desires and the faithful patience with which I work will determine their forms.
Like all tough design projects, the product design of my life will be fruitful to the extent to which I am willing to educate my desires and imagine designs for them that can be built in the real world as the best possible expression of the will of God for my life. A good design will provide the energy for future inspirations.
“Design is an intention towards a desired end; its role is to imagine and plan the form of that end. The essence of design is to make visible underlying potential and reveal an explicit, significant path for the future.”
