nendo : whispers of nature

This year, nendo will host a solo exhibition at Milan Design Week 2024, marking its 20th year of participation. The venue for the show “nendo : whispers of nature” will be a complex facility transformed by Paola Lenti, into a bioecological architectural site with various functions such as an office, showroom, gallery space, and a restaurant, all arranged around a large central courtyard. The exhibition will take place in a small abandoned building within the site, slated for conversion into a boutique hotel in 2026.

Exploring the ambiguity of clouds, the interplay between light and shadow, the passage of time experienced underground or amidst a passing rain, and plants immersed in water... This solo exhibition will feature five collections that have emerged from listening to the subtle "whispers of nature," often overlooked in our daily lives.

Returning to Milan after 20 years since its first exhibition at the Milan Salone in 2004, nendo will once again present designs rooted in nature, which serves as the cornerstone of nendo's design philosophy and encapsulates the unique aesthetic consciousness of the Japanese sense of beauty.

Additionally, the "hana-arashi" designed in collaboration with Paola Lenti will be unveiled at the same site.

passing rain - Crystallizing the moment of a rain shower

A few drops of rain come down, and eventually it starts pouring. The clouds lift soon after. This is the nature of a passing rain. Through the changing expressions of raindrops, the color and light of the sky, and the sounds and smells, we are able to experience the flow of time. These short moments of time are expressed through a series of five bowls.

“Rain streaks” that appear as thin lines are expressed with mirror-finished stainless-steel rods of 2mm in diameter. The rods connect to the aluminum bowl and rain down to the mirrored base. Because the connection to the bowl is at an angle, a weld does not provide sufficient strength. Screws and adhesives were used together to secure the connections, and an inner layer of the bowl hides the screws. The base was welded from the back at the highest temperature that does not distort the plate, and the surface was mirror-finished to reflect the rain.

Among the five bowls, the one expressing “initial raindrops” has the least number of supporting rods, making it the most difficult to construct.

Through an action akin to taking “still frames” of a passing rain, the design entraps the passage of time into objects.

clustered clouds - Translucent shelves in the form of clustered cloud

From afar, clouds in the sky look like white volumes. From an airplane or a mountaintop, however, when clouds are experienced from within, they become a hazy, translucent landscape. The ambiguity of the cloud, somewhere between “volume” and “haze,” was interpreted as a “cluster of translucency” and led to the design of four shelves. Made of stainless perforated metal, the balance between its thickness and amount of perforation was designed as just enough for the material to be perceived. Where the metal overlaps, a moiré pattern emerges, creating visual noise. To minimize the effect of the moiré, the direction of the perforation alignment was rotated by 30 degrees in the back panel based on the result of digital simulations. The process of excavating geometric forms from rectangular volumes creates voids within other voids, giving “volume of emptiness” for a truly cloud-like design.