Our Third Year: A Positive Momentum

Coexisting with Daily Life—How can we create furniture that seamlessly integrates into everyday life? Focusing on universality and daily relevance, Karimoku New Standard has meticulously crafted its products with emerging designers, aiming to support the subtle comforts, joys, and happiness we discover in our daily routines.

The venue was an apartment over 100 years old in Milan's Brera district, now used as a gallery. Walls repainted countless times, floors repaired, and window latches shaped as they were commonly used in the past... Amidst the whirlwind of a busy week, rushing to see hundreds, even thousands, of presentations, we wanted visitors to imagine their own lives with furniture—furniture that should naturally become part of our lives, be used, become familiar, and quietly mark the passage of time alongside us. With this in mind, we chose a space bearing the traces of centuries of living and use, hoping visitors would take their time exploring Karimoku New Standard.

Across five rooms, all previous Karimoku New Standard collections and new prototypes were placed randomly, alongside existing objects such as tableware, fabrics, vases, lighting, and rugs. These objects were created by the designers participating in Karimoku New Standard for other brands or projects. They loosely connect the space and the furniture, transforming the rooms into more realistic settings.

Furthermore, food, an essential part of our daily lives.
Under the theme "Daily Scenes of Food," Arabeschi di Latte, a design unit based in Florence that handles food-related projects, added color to the space with foods (such as apple and walnut candies, pine nuts, and resin candies) inspired by "wood," the raw material for furniture.

Beyond the tall, old windows reaching to the ceiling, the everyday scenes of Milan unfolded. We hope visitors would wander slowly, imagining their own lives, their daily routines, and the slightly more wonderful days that lie ahead.

The design team, centered around Creative Director Teruhiro Yanagihara, includes previous participants (Scholten & Baijings, BIG-GAME, Sylvain Willenz), joined this year by Tomas Alonso (Spain), TAF (Sweden), and ECAL / Lucian Gumy (Switzerland). The brand also unveiled its first-ever dining table.

What is Karimoku New Standard?

The concept is "small objects" that blend into daily life, transcending fleeting trends and status symbols. High-quality items that can be individually incorporated into living spaces according to the user's personality and preferences offer flexibility and functionality to suit diverse lifestyles, while also possessing a new universality demanded by the times.

Karimoku New Standard is also a new challenge to restore balance to forests and the global environment through the sustainable use of wood. This is why we use domestic hardwoods such as maple, chestnut, and oak, which were primarily processed into wood chips for paper pulp and previously went unused. The brand embodies the fusion of furniture-making know-how cultivated through tradition, innovative technology, and the desire to pass on the rich bounty of the forests to the next generation.