GK Design Group held the P-Room Seminar on 19 September 2019 by inviting Mr. Fumikazu Masuda, a design consultant. The seminar centered SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), the subject adopted by the United Nations Summit in 2015.
Mr. Masuda gave us diversified talk with actual samples with views that how design could contribute to tackle on the seventeen subjects of SDGs. The seminar was held in connection with this year’s GK Gallery theme of the internal group symposium “Design and Social Issues”.
He concluded the last part of his speech titled “Kids as Future Generation,” suggesting we need more thoughts on children for the future. The proposal had the context SDGs have not yet hardly mentioned. Thus the seminar became very meaningful as to make the principle of designers’ relationship with social issues from now on.
　
Fumikazu Masuda
Design consultant
President, open house inc.
Chairman of the awards committee, Kids Design Award
　
Fumikazu Masuda was born in 1949 at Tokyo, Japan.
After he graduated from Tokyo Zokei University, he has worked for a housing industry and a design firm before setting up his own office as an independent industrial designer in 1978.
For the first half of his career, he has worked mainly on projects for major Japanese industries, including electric home appliances, electronic devices, audio visual equipment, transportations, packages and many other products from various different categories. The latter half of his career has been dedicated more to work for local SMEs as a design consultant while studying and teaching at design schools.
Besides working on research projects on “design for sustainability”, he is always trying to apply the philosophy and the method to his practical daily works.
He is currently specialized in the field of Design for Sustainability, including Eco-Design, Universal Design, Kids’ Design and Design for the cause.
He is hosting “Destination”, a series of international design conference of design for sustainability, every year since 2006.