CondeHouse company News and Trends items

Of course, almost all of them had been canceled for these two years because of the COVID, but they are back this year! In my summer holidays, I went to the biggest one in Hokkaido... READ MORE https://condehousejapan.com/2022/08/17/the-reason-why-japanese-fireworks-are-unique/

"International Trade Fair for Gift, Handicraft & Homeware Industry" Tokyo International Gift Show (TIGS) is the largest trade show in Japan. The show scale is; Exhibition Area: About 50,000m2, Exhibitors: 3,000. Furthermore, the show quality is higher level than you expected. No exclusions to exhibit or visit!

This sales copy made me pay for the highest-grade Dyson vacuum cleaner, though I’m not interested at all in home electronics and so much in cleaning itself. Sales copies seem to control our behaviors like this. Anyway, how do I like it? I’m completely satisfied with the product and take off my hat to their innovations. Mind you; it’s not about technical innovations. To b...

Watch the best instruction by a video without speaking. This video shows the easiest and tidiest way to extend and store the leaves. There's no finger catching nor floor scratching, either.

Which transportation do you think is best for your trip? By air, sea, or road? According to a report by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, the share of travel by train is highest in the domestic market in Japan. The number-based share of travel by train was about 70% in 2020, and has been increasing year by year, along with a trend that young pe...

Are you going to visit Hokkaido? By any chance, do you come to Asahikawa city? If so, how about joining our Hokkaido Shreds blog. This is a project by CondeHouse in Asahikawa, where you are free to post your thoughts and views about your trip in Hokkaido. Aim of this Hokkaido Shreds project Our industory, furniture manufacturing in Asahikawa, is little-known to overseas...

Do you like video games? Me? I have no interest at all. When I was a kid, almost all the classmates had Nintendo Entertainment System, but I didn’t. No matter how hard I wished for it, my parents didn’t give the nod. Alternatively, I sometimes went to my friends’ houses to play video games, but it was not so fun because the friends were much better. When I was a college ...

It’s a virtual condominium designed by the architect, Sou Fujimoto. The order from us to him was so simple: “Please just design what you like, something to make people feel WOW, the building you want to have in our hometown to revive it (because he is originally from here, Asahikawa, Hokkaido). There’re no legal and budgetary constraints because it’s virtual.” Sou Fujim...

The history of architecture is filled with alternative histories. I'm not talking plans that, for one reason or another, never became realised projects. Rather, I mean resolutely speculative, often fantastical, building schemes, which, slipping the bonds of reality – with all its pesky engineering, political and budgetary parameters – allow for unbridled creative and ide...

KYOBASHI Armchair won a prize 'best of the best' 2022 in Product Design 2022 , Red Dot Design Award known as one of the three major design awards in the world.

Birgit Hoffmann and Christoph Kahleyss express the importance in the process of designing and also their ideas of environmental contributions in design.

Gwenael Nicolas was born in France. He started his career as a product designer in Japan in 1991 and has been practicing based in Tokyo since then. AIMA stands for SPACE or INTERVAL in Japanese. Gwenael Nicolas told the background story of AIMA Dining Armchair with his multicultural point of view.

Kurashiki Ivy square is a hotel and a compound tourist facility remodeled in 2020 utilizing one of the major spinning factory sites in Meiji era. CondeHouse furniture was chosen for the hotel rooms located in the legacy buildings that led Japan's industries. The group of the factory buildings was declared as a Heritage of Industrial Modernization of Japan in 2007. /qu...

Michael Schneider the German designer of TEN Series talks about his new creation and a relationship with CondeHouse , a furniture manufacturer in Hokkaido, Japan

Simply put, it’s a science fiction depicting the contact with aliens. I know it may sound same old, but it’s completely different. The movie depicts the close encounters from the view point of linguistics. What is most interesting to me is the design of the letters the aliens use. It is 3D! The scriptwriter must be a genius. I just imagine he set the story like this. The...

Mistakes are not allowed, and so, we do things the same way as everyone else. This is a pattern of behavior that widely dominates Japanese society. You can see the behavioral patterns a lot especially in Japanese government offices. I can say that for sure from my experience of working as a public servant for more than 10 years. One mistake can shut the door on your care...

He has been designing furniture ergonomically with great functionalities, and are influenced by traditional Scandinavian culture. He has been working with furniture manufacturers from all over the world since 1993 and his design studio participated in countless furniture exhibitions internationally. His works have been widely used in offices, schools, and other public s...

Our TEN Dining Chair was selected for the newest co-working office in London designed by MSMR Architects. (Article) MSMR Architects designs DL/78 workspace to double as "town hall" (Dezeen.com) MSMR Architects has designed a co-working office in London's Fitzrovia that can also be used as a space for talks or exhibitions. DL/78 is located in 80 Charlotte Street, a new...

MOM Round Extension Table with KORENTO Side Chairs at a MICHELIN 2021 awarded sushi hand-roll bar 'NAMI NORI' in NYC.

All the Japanese classrooms look similar at any time and place. My major in college is education. I had visited many schools and found classrooms looked surprisingly uniform. As some of you may say “Likewise in my country,” but I think the uniformity of Japanese classrooms is by far more than yours. The main cause would be the classroom desks and chairs, I guess. You can...

Do you know the green flash? Fairly infrequently, at the moment of sunrise or sunset, the upper rim of the Sun looks to flash in green. You might have learned it from the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean.” On a similar note, I know another strange natural phenomenon. I believed it was, to be more precise. When it heavily snows at night, the sky looks tinged with orange he...

This is the central station of our hometown, Asahikawa, seen from due south. The two bridges are still new, built about 10 years ago. In the days without the two bridges, the city center was divided into two parts, and the south side of the station was just a deserted area. Even now, the area is full of nature for the second biggest city in Hokkaido with the population o...

Restaurant: DAS KRANZBACH / Krün ,Germany Product: KAMUY Lux Armchair designed by Naoto Fukasawa Architecture :studioilse / London https://www.daskranzbach.de/ We are on social media! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CondeHouseEnglish Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/condehouse_english/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/CondeHouseIntl LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.c...

This newest villa is located in Karuizawa, well-known as one of the three best luxury resort areas in Japan. Products: Wing Lux LD Armchair / Ippongi Dining Table / Hakama Dining Table / TEN Dining Table / Challenge Dining Armchair (soft) / Wing Lux LD Table / Wing Lux LD Bench / Hakama Bench / MOLA Lux Living Sofa Club Orbit : https://club-orbit.jp/

Last week a logging company invited us to a mountain tour to see the cutting of trees. While we were going up the mountain plowing through snow, a staff member talked a lot about the troubles they have faced in the mountains. The stories reminded me of a huge hostage crisis lasting for 10 days in the deep mountains in the winter of 1972, though I hadn’t been born yet. Th...

Conde Nast Traveler, one of the world’s most prestigious travel magazine announces every year the ranking of things related to travel, based on the vote of the readers of which number is said to be more than 6 million. It was Tokyo that had won the first place in the ranking of the Best Cities in the World (10 Best Big Cities) for three years straight from 2017 to 2019. ...

I often go to a hot spring place in a nearby town. On the way, there’s a collapsing amusement park “Canadian World.” I have a dim memory of seeing its TV commercials when I was a kid, but I’ve never been there. It must not be only me who have a doubt what this small local city has to do with Canada? According to my research, Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery is th...

Did you know Haagen-Dazs was originated in the US? I thought it came from somewhere in North Europe, which, I assume, would be exactly what the brand founder intended. Let me tell you another example. In Japan, canned coffee is one of the profitable items in the canned-drink market. A Japanese beverage company launched a canned coffee named with “WEST” about 20 years ago...

When the nobility used to use a horse carriage, the coachman seat was upholstered with leather; the passenger seat inside the coach with fabric. In the modern period when the main means of transportation was replaced by cars, the situation changed 180 degrees. Genuine leather is thought to be standard for luxury car seats across the world. I think the only option alterna...

As I think I’ve learned the figure somewhere, 70% of kids under 6 years old are collectomania. At the age of around 10, I was devoted to collecting stickers that came with chocolate cookies. The stickers were very popular among boys at that time. One day, I found a girl in a car running next to my mother’s car, and showed her the best one from my sticker collection throu...

About 15% of Junior high school students can read sentences but not understand their meaning. The news created a sensation in Japan some years ago. That may or may not be true, but I think that would be a natural course of events. Due to the progress of science, we come to have many communication tools other than writing. For example, one of the top selling books in the ...

Hokkaido is a name-brand area even for Japanese people, proudly enough. If saying “I’m from Hokkaido.” outside Hokkaido, we will have a blast in chat. People will come to us and throw words like “I want to go there someday,” “I’ve been there many times,” “I really like beautiful nature and delicious food made of fresh ingredients there,” etc. In fact, Hokkaido is fully s...

I went all over the world (for business, though) together with my boss (current chairman) before the COVID. It was common for us to visit multiple countries at a time. This may sound gorgeous, but it was tough. Making matters worse, I always chose cheap hotels to contain costs. In some hotels, we felt like we might as well sleep in a tent outside. He often complained “Pl...

Did you know that the history of trick-or-treating at Halloween in North America was not so long? It started about in 1930, while Halloween itself has a long history of more than 2000 years. As you may know that, it’s just recently that Halloween became widely known in Japan. The Halloween parade in Tokyo Disney Land started since 1997 is said to trigger the boom. I don’...

In 2008, the great financial crisis started from the Wall Street and struck the whole world. Many companies faced business difficulties, and so did Conde House. A successful product was wanted immediately in order to survive, when our best-selling chair, the WING Lux, was born (2009). Product Changing the Character of the Lux Collection: What if we gather all our techno...

More than 30 years ago, Japanese main railway operations were run by the government. Since the full privatization, many rail lines have been abandoned especially in rural areas like here in Hokkaido. If we only pursue efficiency, we probably should gather and live only in city areas. I’m going to hate to lose diverse regional cultures, though. Neoliberalism still tries t...