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10 stories

IconOriginal BTC’s new portable lamp celebrates British ceramic craft Unveiling its second portable design, British lighting brand Original BTC proves a lamp built for practicality can still be a showcase for artisanal bone china Courtesy of Original BTC, The Blossom…

10.29

IconICON Picks: 10 best new-season design and lifestyle launches A thoughtful selection of the latest lifestyle and design news, plus the creatives who are championing regenerative fashion Photography by Sinan Çırak 1.

10.28

IconMU Architecture creates a Japanese-inspired family home in Montreal A curved glass-brick screen, double-height living spaces and generous outdoor areas bring light, intimacy and calmness to this urban home Photography by Raphaël Thibodeau In Montreal’s vibrant…

10.26

IconDesign at Work New York announces opening of visitor registration Visitor registration is open for Design at Work New York, March 10–11, 2027, featuring workplace interiors, leading brands and CEU-accredited learning .

10.21

Icon‘The least tangible things can have the biggest impact’: Fletcher Priest Architects on design, wellbeing and how spaces make us feel Fletcher Priest Architects’ month-long exhibition, The Rhythm of Wellness , explores how Norwegian design, natural materials and craftsmanship can influence wellbeing, rest and recovery Photography…

10.20

IconMerrie Elisabet Wells wins Shoreditch Design Week Award with product Ūru Loop Exhibited at New Designers at London’s Business Design Centre in July, Merrie Elisabet Wells’ Ūru Loop impressed the judges with its commercial potential, modular versatility and commitment to…

10.14

IconKirkby unveils a bold new visual identity The textile house formerly known as Kirkby Design has entered a new chapter, sharpening its visual identity and unveiling a refined creative direction.

10.09

IconChristoph Hefti Unveils His Fantastical World at Zurich’s Museum of Design In his first-ever solo exhibition, held at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, textile designer Christoph Hefti invites viewers into his creative process and the imaginative worlds woven into each of…

10.01

IconThe Galerie Nationale du Design: a new landmark institution Opened in Saint-Étienne in June 2026, the Galerie Nationale du Design offers a new perspective on design heritage and culture.

09.29

IconInside Finarte’s joyful world of handwoven rugs and textiles Intricate patterns, vivid colours and age-old techniques meet in Finarte’s latest collection of beautifully handcrafted rugs and cushions Photography courtesy of Finarte featuring Tobevi If there is…

09.24

発見, hakken: a finding. This is a record of what one designer notices in a week.

I grew up beside the Arakawa, in Adachi, and spent five years in a Ginza studio drawing identities for companies you have used without once thinking about them. That work teaches you to read a city as a page. A vending machine is set type. A rice bag is a packaging problem somebody solved in the eighties and nobody has improved on since. A good deal of the best design in Japan is like that: already in the street, unsigned, waiting to be looked at properly.

So this magazine watches the street as well as the feed. Around fifty sources come in through the day, ten of them Japanese, and what the world's studios are arguing about is counted and plotted so you can watch it move. Every third day I write about one thing I actually stood in front of.

What you get for a story is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the way out to the people who reported it. Never the article itself, and never the photograph as though it were ours. A story written in Japanese stays in Japanese here, headline and excerpt both, because that is how its author set it down.

Everything is also published in Japanese at hakkenmag.com/ja/.

— Ren Arakawa, Tokyo