Check out the amazing works of Noguchi, if you are ever in NYC grab a 15 min cab ride to Queens & visit the noguchi museum, a wicked cool industrial space...which he designed. JUST AWESOME!

for Dennis Cook, who was making kickin "zen like" sculptures like this back in the day- CSH,HS 83'.

& Michael Robertson, an AMAZING artist who first introduced me to his work. thanks "Miquel"!

isamu noguchi sculptor, designer, architect, and craftsman
(1904 - 1988)

ABOUT

isamu noguchi (pronounced as: sämoo nogooch)

was a sculptor, designer, architect, and craftsman.

he believed that through sculpture and architecture,

one could better understand the struggle with nature.

isamu noguchi was born in los angeles in 1904

to an irish-american teacher and editor,

and a japanese poet.

isamu noguchi was raised in japan until, at 13,

he was sent to the us to study.

after winning one of the first guggenheim fellowships

in 1927, noguchi travelled to paris where he worked

for six months as a studio assistant to the sculptor,

constantin brancusi.

http://www.noguchi.org

http://www.designboom.com/portrait/noguchi/akari.html

The Isamu Noguchi *Akari lamps

*Akari, a term meaning light as illumination, but also implying the idea of weightlessness.

With the warm glow of light cast through hand-made paper on a bamboo frame, Isamu Noguchi utilized traditional Japanese materials to bring modern design to the home. Like the beauty of falling leaves and the cherry blossom, Noguchi wrote, Akari are "poetic, ephemeral, and tentative." And he was fond of saying,

"All that you require to start a home are a room, a tatami, and Akari. " - I. N.

returning to new york in 1932, he made his name as

a sculptor and portrait artist, as well as winning

commissions for memorials, monuments and

industrial designs with his long-time friend, the visionary engineer buckminster fuller, he constructed models,

planned outdoor projects, and investigated the ways

in which people live and thrive in their environments.

his inventive work embraced alsosettings for the

martha graham dance company. He is best known for his abstract sculptures designed as adjuncts to architecture.

an example of his environmental work is his massive

red cube designed for the marine midland bank

building, new york city.

1950's Playgrounds designed by Noguchi

as a landscape architect, noguchi created a large

number of playgrounds, parks and gardens.

in the 1950s, he designed gardens for keio university

in tokyo, lever house in new york and unesco’s

headquarters in paris. His 1960s projects include a sculpture garden for the national museum in jerusalem and gardens surrounding the connecticut general life insurance building designed by skidmore, owings and merrill.

his entrance for the new museum of modern art,

tokyo, was completed in 1969. During the 1980s, noguchi realized more public projects and created his own museum in long island, new york, where his large and varied collection of work is exhibited today.

noguchi died in new york city in 1988.

http://www.noguchi.org

He created his first furniture prototypes for Herman Miller in 1942 and went on to work with companies such as Steuben and Zenith. The Noguchi Table (1948) conceals nothing, revealing everything about the nature of simplicity. Two smoothly shaped pieces interlock to form a tripod that supports a three-quarter-inch-thick slab of transparent glass.

Noguchi's CYCLONE DINING TABLE Conceived in 1953 as a rocking stool made of metal wire and wood, Noguchi's playful object was manufactured the following year in varying sizes.

Noguchi’s rocking stool was originally produced by Vitra, and is now returning to production. Designed in 1954 the stool allows a full range of movement from side to side.