Finally, we are able to feel the long-awaited arrival of autumn. As temperatures have dropped to around 18 degrees Celsius, the flow of air coming in through the screen door, combined with the soothing sounds of insects, begins to produce heeling effects on us. A comfortable environment like this seems to provide an extra room for thinking in my mind.

One day, while spending a long autumn night with a beer in hand, I started to make a craft for an unexpected reason. What led me to engage in this task was a bunch of popsicle sticks I found in my mug when I came home from work. It apparently was the work of my children, who washed and dried the sticks after eating ice candies. They said they no longer needed them. Kids, why didn’t you put them in the trash can? By the way, this long-selling ice candy was available at only 10 yen in my childhood.

As I thought whether to discard those sticks, I was struck with the idea of tensegrity. It was a theory of spatial structuring promoted by the American architect and designer Buckminster Fuller. It specifies that when making an object, the use of reinforcing materials can be reduced to a minimum by using nothing but tension and balance to hold it in a fixed state. The picture below shows the result of my handiwork. The structure is supported by tense slender threads. It looks as if the three sticks are floating in the air, doesn’t it?

Some structures appear beautiful on their own. I believe those sophisticated structures ultimately constitutes the basics of life and nature. Colors and forms also follow the same principle. In a quiet autumn night, I was reminded me that Nature serves as an example to follow.

Hiroyuki Hishiki
Product Design Dept.
Master Designer