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Hideki Yoshimoto
Hideki Yoshimoto is a designer and engineer, working on a wide range of creative and technology projects. He studied aero-astro engineering at the University of Tokyo, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. He subsequently carried out PhD research at the Royal College of Art, with an interest in motion as an element of design. His projects and research have received several international awards in both design and engineering, including Lexus Design Award’s Grand Prix, Red Dot Design Concept’s Best of the Best Award, and Best Conference Award from the Japanese Society of Artificial Intelligence.
Hideki Yoshimoto, Future Heritage 2016 Alumnus
Hideki Yoshimoto’s focus is in bringing poetic delight in life through design, with an appropriate use of technology. With this in mind, he founded Tangent, his own lighting brand in 2015 in London. A tangent line does not dissect a curve but touches it at one given point. Respecting such gentleness and subtleness, as well as the power of the point of contact, the brand carefully and delicately tells a narrative which talks to people’s hearts.
In addition to managing his own brand Tangent, Hideki Yoshimoto has undertaken various commissions to design products and spaces. His clients include the World’s top luxury brands such as Hermes, Lexus, Wonderglass and Globe-Trotter. Moreover his area of work is expanding further to fields of technological research, where he utilises his interdisciplinary knowledge to move projects with teams of scientists and engineers.
Hideki Yoshimoto was appointed as a visiting associate professor at Osaka University of Arts in Japan in 2018.
KIHOU By Hideki Yoshimoto
At Future Heritage
As Tangent, Yoshimoto worked closely with the curator Corinne Julius, to create ‘rooms’ for Tangent’s products which bridged design, crafts and technology. For example, ‘Inaho’, one of Tangent’s most popular pieces, is a floor light inspired by golden ears of rice swaying in the wind. Human-detection sensors and custom-made electronics cause the stems to sway as a person passes by. Tangent created a chandelier to complement ‘Inaho’ as well as producing a new soap dispenser ‘Shabon’ a bubbling ‘Kihou’ table and a ‘Kihou’ light in conjunction with Vezzini and Chen. A further room contained the installation ‘Fluff.’
“We sold a number of works exhibited at Future Heritage and were so successful that we exhibited in our own right the following year. We also were invited to take part in another exhibition in Central London.” - Hideki Yoshimoto
Current work
Tangent designed and produced an installation and window displays for the Hermès booth at SIHH (Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie), one of the world’s most prestigious trade fairs for watches. As the central piece of the space, they created a sculpture named “Here”. This was a sphere of 3.5 metres in diameter, which rotated slowly, representing planet Earth. The whole sphere was covered in 20,480 triangular tiles of solar cells made from an older generation stock of unusable photovoltaic cells.
The project was shown again, with other Tangent products at the London Design Festival 2019.
ASCENSION By Hideki Yoshimoto
If you would like to make an enquiry about Hideki Yoshimoto and commissions, get in touch here or visit his website www.tangent.uk.com
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