The year 2018 marked the 21st edition of the SaloneSatellite,global appointment for talented young designers.This edition was dedicated to the design of the future and a new kind of beauty.

Since 1998, SaloneSatellite has endeavored to seek out, valorize and offer concrete possibilities to young designers under 35. It was an annual event geared to fostering contact between young designers and exhibiting companies. It was held during The Salone Internazionale del Mobile, at the Milan Fairgrounds, which was in its 40th international edition in 2018.

The founder and Curator of the SaloneSatellite is Marva Griffin.

Each year participants, young designers present their ideas for the first time at this event. 

The SaloneSatellite 21st edition was again dedicated to the design stars of the future. Approximately 650 designers took part in SaloneSatellite. 

They presented their fresh ideas and design on the area of 2,800 m2 in Pavilions 13-15 of the Milan Fairgrounds Rho. Young designers offered their new prototypes to the 1841 exhibitors presented at the Fair (total number of exhibitors was 1842 exhibitors + 650 designers of SaloneSatellite = 2492).

Exhibitors exposed their product on a net exhibition area of 210.846 square meters  (the SaloneSatellite area included in this exhibition space).

Many of the projects presented at the SaloneSatellite over the years have become successful products, even icons of design, while others have won prestigious prizes and still, others have entered the collections of the most important design museums. 

This year selected works of new rising stars will join ranks with designers who have already taken part in previous editions of SaloneSatellite.Milano.

About SaloneSatellite Award 2018: the shape of design to come

The SaloneSatellite Award competition was in 2018 into its 9th edition; it marks a further step towards facilitating the interface between demand and supply, between business people and designers and between creativity and production. 

SaloneSatellite’s challenge has always been to imagine the shape of design to come and to try and imagine how future generations will forge a new, perfect balance between project, function and beauty.

For their part, the young Salone Satellite protagonists from all over the world were asked to showcase works that explore the relationship between heritage and the contemporary scene, with projects poised between the new technologies and craftsmanship.

As always, a prestigious Selection Committee, composed of leading international figures 

in the world of design, planning and communication, chaired by Marva Griffin Wilshire, has inspected and selected the entries of the 650 participants. 

The participants in the SaloneSatellite were asked to present, in addition to their prototypes, one or more projects belonging to product categories of biennial shows at Salone Internazionale del Mobile. For the edition of 2018, they were EuroCucina and the International Bathroom. 

An international jury of leading figures in the design world is involved in the award Process.

They considered all aspects of the proposed design, including the idea it carries and the propensity to experiment, functionality, materials used, access to nature and creative recycling, new technologies and digital effects, attitude to the past and application of traditional techniques, the power of the message that the design carries.

The jury selected the 3 most outstanding products. 

Several events were organized during the Salone Internazionale del Mobile. SaloneSatellite  hosted the multimedia exhibition AFRICA & LATIN AMERICA Rising Design / Design Emergente, which was conceived by Griffin Marva Griffin. The aim was to draw attention to two areas of the world, the creativity and design potential they have. Fernando and Humberto Campana were responsible for the set-up of the Latin American section while Hicham Lahlou organized the African section.

The winners of the SaloneSatellite Award 2018 were:

The jury has selected three projects that stand out because of the message they embody, focusing not just on the formal incisiveness of their design but also their sustainable, communicative, interactive and ludic element, essential for the lives of adults and children now and, hopefully, also in the future. 

The three best projects in the represented categories were: 

• The First Prize went to Stefano Carta Vasconcellos from Italyfor Cucina Leggera (Light Kitchen), thepart of the CelerFurniture collection. The kitchen unit can be assembled through the interlocking of seven elements, without screws or hardware.  

The Jury considered that ease of construction and assembly, compactness and financial accessibility are the main characteristics of the Light Kitchen. They considered that such the sort of design approach and vision will continue to hold good for the future.

• The Second prize was awarded to Tink Things from Croatia for Tink Things. The design approach considered a wide spectrum of sensory needs while using therapeutic principles of sensory integration to design products that shape a comfortable and encouraging environment for all kids. 

This project sees children not as small adults, but quite simply as children. Tink Things caters to their specific playful and sensory needs, helping them grow happily and with awareness.

• The third prize went to Yuri Himuro from Japan for Soft Block. This is a new home decoration object like a block toy. They provide a new building experience that takes advantage of softness and allows the user to twist and bend it.

The Soft Block fabric modules encourage the interaction and creativity of the user, like an unfinished project open to infinite variations and possibilities. They also demonstrate the ability of the fabric to become a three-dimensional and modular element for decorating spaces simply and with a personal touch. 

The three awards consisted of an attendance allowance. Winners were also able to avail themselves of consultancy service and press office, in order to guarantee maximum visibility for the winning product.

At the 21st edition, SaloneSatellite will again be collaborating with the Milanese department store La Rinascente, which will select a number of the products designed by the young SaloneSatellite designers for display and sale at the Milan Design Supermarket, in Piazza Duomo, from Autumn to Christmas 2018. 

Banca Intesa Sanpaolo has been awarding a special prize worth 5,000 euros since 2017. Their award 2018 went to emerging talents that the jury felt best represented the theme of sustainability. The European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 award was also given to an outstanding sustainability project during SaloneSatellite 2018.

Yuri Himuro in 2018

In 2018, Yuri Himuro was a young textile designer with a master degree. She studied textile design in Japan and Finland. Yuri Himuro graduated from Tama Art University (2011) and obtained a BA diploma. She was at the Textile Art & Design department by Aalto University, based on a student exchange in 2012, and she completed her master's studies at Tama Art University in 2013. Two years after graduation, she left her first job and started an independent professional internship as a textile entrepreneur. She founded her studio Yuri Himuro Studio in 2016 and two years later founded Himuro Design Studio inc (2018).

From the beginning of her career, Yuri Himuro was involved in designing textiles and weaving systems. Her specialization is jacquard weaving. Yuri Himuro combines this way of waving with cutting technique and enables the user to create his design. The procedure is easy and an example can be her ‘Snip Snap’ collection. The user purchases the fabric in line with their taste and needs and has the opportunity to cut fabric across different locations determined by the artist. With the help of scissors, they cut fabric components discovering patterns and shapes hidden inside. The result of this approach is the original and unique design, customized to the user. This creative process brings out surprises and pleasure not only to the artist but for the user too. The collections of jacquard textiles with contrasting images on the top and backside are especially intriguing. This design solution is made possible by creatively manipulating the woven mechanism. For example, under the theme ‘Hide and seek’, the user discovers on the backside a hidden story not shown in the front side of the textile. In this way the artist creates the interaction of her artwork and its users.

At the beginning of her career, Yuri Himuro’s clients were different Japanese companies like Swimmie, textile company Kokka, Nihonbashi Toyama. The collection of handkerchiefs with transparent patterns, new print textile collections or new graphic designs are the result of this cooperation. The collection of handkerchiefs was especially interesting. The designer used innovative transparent printing technology for textile to achieve needed results. The themes shown on the handkerchiefs were different: a dark forest and wild animals, the lives behind each window or the life under the sea, unique scenes from the Finnish sauna setting and many others. 

She had a special collaboration with the company Cassina. She designed new Snip Snap textile and created installation arts for this client. Exhibition and sale of these designs by Yuri Himur was organized for Christmas 2017.

The Christmas collection for Cassina is not the only one. Yuri Himuro designed White Christmas collection for Takashimaya in 2018. The products she created until 2018 are numerous. Her iPhone case makes the user look like holding a bouquet of favorite flower (My favorite). The case is polycarbonate suitable for iPhone and Xperia telephones designed for the client Cinra Store (2017). She also designed a wallpaper collection for WhO with dots and borders on the textile that create visual (2017), wall textile Night Forest for glam pool in Hilton Fukuoka Sea Hawk ( 2018) and  collection ‘Eat  Well, Play Well, Sleep Well’ for  Familiar. The fabric is an image of an apple tree forest where children and baby animals are eating, playing and sleeping in the forest. When the user cut the surface yarn, can find the apple, flower and leaves.

To promote her designs Yuri Himuro took part in sone international fairs. At Milano Salone Satellite in Milano she exhibited Snip  Snap , Hide and Seek collection and  motion-textile series (2017) and Bloom collection (2018) while at Ambiente in  Frankfurt, she presented her  Snip  Snap collection. Yuri Himuro also had many individual exhibitions in different galleries.

One of her first exhibitions was ‘Toy Fabrics’, held at Haus&Terasse in Shibuya, Tokyo in 2013 and then follow the solo exhibition ‘Treasure Hunt’ at Rocket in Harajuku, Tokyo, in 2015.

To 2018 her products were in Pop-up shops in different parts of Japan: in Sapporo, Tokyo, Okazaki, Kyoto and others. Her Snip Snap cushions were available at Shop Cooper Hewitt in New York.

She has won many international awards for her work. Yuri Himuro has been selected as American design magazine Dwellʼs ‘Young Guns 2017’ and the same year Young Designer Award at Japanese design tradeshow IFFT/Interior, lifestyle, living. Then follow Himuro’s Salone Satellite Award in 2018 (Third Prize) and Elle Deco international Design Awards 2018 for Young Japanese Design Talents.

She participated in different talks relating the design and did a lecture for the student of space art and design at Kyoto University of Art and Design.

Designer Yuri Himuro about herself

1.

SaloneSatellite is an international event in the design world to help designers under-35s establish themselves in the industry. 

What do you remember about your taking part in SaloneSatellite 2018?

In 2018, I participated in the Salone Satellite for the second time, and exhibited the BLOOM blanket at the booth. We took advantage of our strength in designing from the structure of weaving to express completely different patterns on the front and the back, so that the two patterns would be connected to complete a single pattern. We were very conscious of the impact of the colors and patterns among the many booths.

 2.

Started in 2010, the SaloneSatellite Award introduced a further opportunity to facilitate contact between young designers and businesses. 

With your The Soft Block fabric, you were the Third Prize winner 2018. Have the Award had much of an impact on your career? If so, how?

Winning a prize in a competition with nearly 600 designers will lead to trust and expectations, which in turn will lead to the next job.

3.

What is your opinion, why you received the Award? How your design was different from others and what additional values it carried?

Looking at the other winners, we can see that products that are not finished products, but variable products that accompany the user, are highly valued.

By allowing the user to customize the product according to his or her own preferences, rather than just buying it and being done with it, the product is fresh and attractive enough to prevent the user from immediately no longer needing it and to allow the user to cherish it for a long time. My work is intended to give people a fun experience of working with their own hands to create something to their liking.

4.

What is most important in the process of development of the new product? 

BLOOM is designed from the structure of the weave, and Soft block is designed from the way the strings are made. By thinking about the structure, I can create products that have never existed before. Making new things that have never been made before is the most difficult and fun part.

Design is very much connected to society and its changes. Today the changes are numerous: a new way of doing business, coronavirus pandemic conditions, circular economy… Designers have to look for solutions and responses to them.

Do you think that the role of the designer changed now and how? 

I believe that the role of a designer is not only to create, but also to communicate and transmit information. In the case of Corona, in particular, there are fewer opportunities to actually touch and see the product. I think it is important for designers to convey to users how they designed the product and what kind of thoughts they put into it through words, pictures, and videos.

6.

Do you have any piece of advice for young designers entering the design world?      

I think it's great to participate in exhibitions like Satelite, where young designers from all over the world gather, from a young age.

Depending on the country, it may cost a lot of money in terms of travel and transportation costs, but I think the encounters and experiences you get there are more than worth it.

Yuri Himuro in 2021

In 2021, textile designer and artist Yuri Himuro runs her Himuro Design Studio inc in Taito, Tokyo. She is constantly imagining and realizing new designs. Her brand has developed many textile collections with a variety of themes. Sometimes they are motifs from everyday life, sometimes floral motifs or imaginary themes such as hidden fossils, dinosaurs and pottery (Hakkutsu). There are also scenes of frozen Lake Lapland with fish around fishermen, then hidden animals and beetles (Shiba). The planes and planets on the clear blue sky (Sky) are another theme as well as cherry blossom trees full of pink flowers that turn into summer green trees when viewed from the opposite side (Sakura).

All her textiles are playful with interesting prints, colorful. Yuri Himur's creations are recognizable and original. Her designs are sometimes childish but always very expressive. Her jacquard textile confirms her knowledge of weaving techniques and the various results and patterns that can be achieved. Her designs are intended for creative users because they have to discover a story hidden in textiles and create new, unexpected colors and shapes, creating their unique design. The collections of jacquard textiles with contrasting images on each side are even more surprising. In these cases, two samples are connected to complete one pattern. In the Ondo collection the motifs of the clothes of pedestrians who walk briskly under the hot summer sun on the back of the fabric change into a story about people who quietly fight through the windy winter weather. Bloom collection includes a full array of vivid and impactful flower patterns in front, and on the backside is a textile with its stems and leaf patterns. 

She skillfully plays with different yarns utilizing polyester yarn, wool material or their combinations and achieves very light, soft and smooth or roughly woven textile suitable for a different purpose.

Woven textiles are not the only ones represented in her collection. She also uses innovative transparent textile printing technologies to achieve the special effects of designs. In some cases, woven textile was reinterpreted and reconstructed into a print design (‘Snip Snap -Sky ‘  collection as part of the collection ‘From Japan with Love’ for Liberty London.

Her textiles are suitable for wide-ranging products including decorative pieces that can be wall decoration, tapestry and cushions or fabrics for furniture, blankets, rags always with original ideas, ambarellas. In her work, she also dealt with package design for food, a luncheon mat, new home decoration object, rug for the kids play, soft face puzzle, handkerchiefs, kitchen towels, a baby rompers collection and many others.

She was also involved in providing designs and artworks for various companies, such as a series of artworks for a shopping mall Ecute in Tachikawa Station, textile art panel, rug and cover of the menu for the restaurant "100 Spoons" within Tachikawa Green Springs, curtains of the house in Yanakacho, which was designed by Kasai Taiga + Chung Ehyang Architects, than the limited package of Shiseido's medicated whitening serum.

Himuro Design Studio inc was in charge of the renewal design of the ‘Toden Room’, at the Hoshino Resort OMO5 Tokyo Otsuka. Himuro Yuri designed a lot of unique textile designs and graphics for cushions, wallpaper, carpets, bathrooms and bed areas to give a fun experience to guests.

In that period, the career achievement of Yuri Himuro was awards received and a range of products on exhibitions. She received Elle Deco Italia "30 young talent" award and was nominated Elle Deco International Design Awards 2020 Young Design Talents.She also exhibited at international fairs like Milano Salone Satellite in Milano (2019) with Threads collection and on Maison & Objet in Paris with Snip Snap collection the same year. Her design was exhibited in Tokyo, Fukuoka as well as in Shanghai at East Design  Show  (invited exhibition） and on Jerusalem design week (invited exhibition).

Yuri Himuro is a young designer building her own unique style in the design world. As said by the designer she turns cutting as a destruction process into the creative one. But her mission is also to involve other people in her creative process and to awaken the artistic capabilities of every person interested in her designs. 

Yuri Himuro  is from 2019 Lecturer for Zokei University in Tokyo, conveys her creative experiences  in the design to young generation of students.

This post is a story of the SaloneSatellite Award and how it had a positive impact on the young designer career. SaloneSatellite Award provided Yuri Himuro self-confidence, trust in herself and energy to go forward towards new jobs.