Exhibiting at FÒCO — Archiproducts Milano

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During Milan Design Week in April 2026, The Archiproducts Milano unveiled its interior project "FÒCO," and three kinds of my works were included in the exhibition.

 

On display, there are four pieces of "When Will The Wind Rise," along with one each of "As Long As The Night Lasts" and "The Blue Hours." They will remain at Archiproducts Milano not only for a week of MDW, but for close to one year afterward.

 

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who supported me and visited the exhibition, the lovely team at Archiproducts, and Studiopepe, who selected my works.

 

 

 

 

Back to Milan, Two Years On

 

 

I happened to be staying in Milan around the same time for another project as an engineer. I had also visited Milan for just three days in April two years ago as the first stop on my first trip to Europe, so I was really happy to be able to go back. This time, I was able to visit the exhibition in person several times in between work commitments.

 

The Archiproducts Milano first opened during Milan Design Week in 2016, as a permanent base that translates the vast online platform of Archiproducts into a space people can actually walk through, sit in, and touch. Studiopepe is a Milan-based design studio led by Arianna Lelli Mami and Chiara Di Pinto, known for two decades of material research and an approach in which poetry and rigor coexist. Over the past four years, Studiopepe has developed a series of interior projects for the space based on the four classical elements.

 

"Earth", "Water", "Air" — each year the interior was curated around one element, and this year, 2026, the series reached its final chapter with "Fire"—"FÒCO. Living Notes by Studiopepe." FÒCO, I'm told, is an old Italian word for fire.

 

 

Photo: Eller Studio, courtesy of Archiproducts

 

 

The first message from Archiproducts arrived about a year ago, in the summer of 2025. I didn't know the company at the time, so I asked architects and designers I knew, and was surprised to learn that it is one of the largest interior design platforms on the web in both Europe and the United States.

 

I received an invitation to exhibit my work during Salone and for the following year. Earlier this year, the two of Studiopepe actually selected some of my pieces, and I created them in time for MDW in April and shipped them over.

 

"Milano Salone" — as the whole event is commonly called in Japan — was, until a few years ago, a name I had heard without knowing anything real about it: where it took place, or what was actually shown.

 

Strictly speaking, what we call "Milano Salone" refers to the whole of Milan Design Week (MDW), held every April over a single week. At its center is the furniture trade fair, "Salone del Mobile.Milano," held at the main fairgrounds in the Rho Fiera district outside the city.

 

The main venue is sooo vast — imagine a long row of enormous gymnasiums — so large that even a full week is not enough to see everything, with brands gathering from all over the world.

 

Meanwhile, throughout the week, exhibitions and events take place all across the city of Milan. These are known as the Fuorisalone: everyone from long-established houses to rising designers stages inventive shows in every corner of the city.

 

If you know Tokyo, imagine a week-long festival taking over the well-known neighborhoods inside the Yamanote loop, with a trade fair running at Big Sight out by the bay.

 

 

The entrance of the main venue (in 2024)

 

 

Archiproducts Milano, where my works were(are) on display, sits in the southern part of the city, in the Tortona district near the canal — the same canal, I'm told, from which Porco's flying boat takes off in Studio Ghibli's Porco Rosso.

 

The area developed early on as an industrial district, and its former factory sites now house some of the week's best-known venues, such as Superstudio and BASE.

 

Coming out of Porta Genova, the nearest station, you head not toward the busy streets out front but around the back of the station, in a wide detour. The atmosphere is nothing like the traffic-heavy center of town: exhibition and installation spaces spread out over the streets, and young people were out from midday, drinks in hand, soaking in the mood.

 

 

From the rooftop of BASE Milano

 

 

When I first came to Milan two years ago, an instalation by Ingo Maurer — the German lighting brand I love the most — was being held in this same district. The crowds, the festivity carried on among the carefully placed lights: it was one of those times when you forget to take photos and simply want to stay.

 

Archiproducts Milano stood at what felt like the center of that heat. Across the street from a large exhibition building, an apartment-like building appears.

 

 

 

 

Was my work really in there??? At first, anxiety and anticipation in equal measure. Then I found the SHINTARO KONO logo at the reception desk, and my heart literally leapt. Something I came up at a desk in Tokyo was now here, in Milan, Italy. Walking in, I wondered if this is how parents feel watching their child step onto the stage.

 

Inside, it feels less like a showroom than like visiting someone's beautifully furnished home, moving through one connected room after another. And no wonder! The building is a converted apartment from the early twentieth century. The corridors are just wide enough for two people to squeeze past each other; on the stairs, those going up and those coming down have to take turns.

 

 

Photo: Eller Studio, courtesy of Archiproducts

 

 

This slightly maze-like interior works like a switch, resetting the world that each new room and its furnishings create — I found it thrilling.

 

After some exploring, I found the four of "When Will The Wind Rise" beautifully mounted on a wall in a wide, half-outdoor space on the upper floor, its windows open to the air.

 

Further in, the red and blue light of "As Long As The Night Lasts" was serenely arranged on a shelf.

 

Things I had created, now dressing a space through professional hands. At first, more than joy, what I felt was unreality — and a kind of shyness. I walked back and forth in front of them, studying them closely while pretending to be just another visitor.

 

 

Photo: Eller Studio, courtesy of Archiproducts

 

Photo: Eller Studio, courtesy of Archiproducts

 

The other lighting works in the project included pieces by established Italian brands such as Luceplan and Terzani — work that holds poetic beauty and serious engineering within a single body. It was humbling; and at the same time, those towering figures felt just a little closer than before.

 

 

 

 

 

Layers of Time

 

 

FÒCO carries the subtitle "Living Notes."

 

Rather than lining up furniture and lighting from different brands as isolated products, the space arranges them as if jotting them down, one by one, into the sketchbook of a lived-in room — embodied as a single story. That way of thinking felt, somewhere, in quiet resonance with what I have long called my own works: "Living Equipment" (生活装置).

 

Lighting is not only for making a room bright. Its light, and its form as an object, also act on the mind — on our sense of time, on our connection with others, and with ourselves.

 

And this does not happen through a single object alone. It happens through combinations of things, through the colors and shapes of the space they are placed in, the way the air moves and the light enters — even the way the city itself has been built.

 

Beyond lighting, what else could be made that effetcs on people and spaces, across over the time and place? I felt I had come away with a large new question.

 

 

 

 

The canal at Porta Genova was once a waterway for carrying goods. A railway came to run alongside it; factories and warehouses were built; and the buildings that fell out of use gradually turned into exhibition spaces for design and fashion.

 

Walking through European cities, I often feel that the old is never simply replaced by the new. Rather, like bricks laid slightly offset, each era remains stacked upon the last with its outline intact.

 

Archiproducts Milano, too, is a place that keeps building a new living space, year after year, inside that old city.

 

And into its 2026 space, the Living Equipment I made was allowed to take its place among the layers.

 

Against the long history of the city, it may amount to no more than an instant. Even so — something came up at a desk in Tokyo has crossed over to Milan, and here it can watch over someone's time. Long after I finished walking through the exhibition, that thought stayed with me: happy, and a little strange.

 

 

FÒCO remains on view for close to a year after Milan Design Week. If you have the chance to be in Milan, I would be glad if you visited — together with the streets of Tortona.

 

 

 

 

photo by Mina Asaba

 

 

 

 

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