Makio Hasuike Studio Visit
Worked on my presentation today, and in the afternoon we paid a visit to Makio Hasuike and his studio in Milan. The building was incredible: four floors, with an exhibition space (currently empty) and two showrooms full of product, along with a model studio, offices, meeting rooms, and the design studio. There might have been some other rooms, but I was on the verge of getting lost whilst walking around. The building has a wonderful spiral staircase connecting the floors, and the exhibition space was impressive. I think there are pictures floating around which I’ll have to hunt down…
We sat down with Makio in the basement conference room and he talked about opening his design studio in Milan and the role his company plays with companies. His studio is so in demand that they don’t really get much opportunity to work on more theoretical work, but at the same time they get to work on implementing and producing their designs instead of just being involved in the design phase.
One of the more interesting points he made was with regard to quantity and quality. In his opinion, the way to reach quality is through quantity: just produce. Eventually you find what works and in this massive process of refinement you generate quality. I was also curious about process, which he said should be flexible to respond to the situation and needs of the particular project. I liken this approach to the “beginner’s mind” in Zen Buddhism, or the value of emptiness in Taoism: the classic example is that a bowl is only useful when it’s empty.
I personally subscribe to this approach, and hold it as a model of how to approach my work. Thus, I’m looking at a variety of sources and areas, going on intuition and gut feeling and simple exploration as much as inductive reasoning and analysis. Sometimes the most interesting things are the ones you find by accident. And even if you have a mental model of how things work, you always need to be open and flexible enough to change that model. We could talk about how successful I am in applying this line of thinking to my life beyond work, but that conversation belongs in another place.