In 2013, Hideki Yoshimoto became the inaugural recipient of the Lexus Design Award with Inaho, lighting that riffs poetically on rice in the wind. Its form mimics the grain’s long ear, with the futurist twist of an ability to bend towards those who approach it. Since then, Tangent, the design firm he founded with Yoshinaka Ono just after the big win, has found clever ways to bend tech towards poetics in major collaborations with Hermés and Wonderglass. His connection to Lexus has only deepened, resulting in a 2020 commission to conceive a new trophy for the Design Award he was the first to win.

This spring, he’ll install Beyond the Horizon, an interactive lighting installation showcasing the Lexus Future Zero-Emission Catalyst concept car at Superstudio Più during Milan Design Week. Yoshimoto took a moment for a conversation with Surface, edited and condensed below, in which he discusses the design award’s impact, how he brings technology to humanity, and what he can reveal about the new installation.

How did the award happen and what did it mean to you?

I was a student at the Royal College of Art. Engineering, aeronautics, and astronautics was my original background, so I was an engineer moving to design. I was nervous; they’re different worlds. I wasn’t confident about being a designer or even being a student. And obviously, being Japanese and studying in a different country. It’s not about winning awards, but it was about getting confidence in the world of design, so it was a big thing. My winning piece, Inaho, is still very popular. People still buy it ten years later, so it’s proven to be a good idea.

Did that confidence feed into you launching your own firm?

It gave me the kickstart. Winning the award made me feel like I’ll belong, and that I needed a name. Tangent stands for the tangent line, touching a curve. One of my focuses is bringing technology to humanity and design. Sometimes technology is too sharp, but I wanted to touch gently and softly, respecting the human. This balance is what I aimed for.

How does that figure into the work Tangent has done?

It’s all connected. I realized Inaho as a real project; people saw it and invited me to show in Paris and Dubai, and Cyril Zammit invited me to do a screening on the Burj Khalifa’s facade. We thought of bridging the ground and outer space, so it’s a seven-minute animation that starts with red magma, like the Earth’s core, and ascends through layers of the ground and into the ocean and desert, the wind of a winter storm, and through highways up into a blue sky. Then it travels far away towards different degrees of the universe. We named it Ascension.

The Earth also figures into your installation for Hermès.

They showed me [the Arceau L’Heure De La Lune] watch and explained it has two moons, and I came up with the idea in two minutes. There’s a Japanese poem about a shipwrecked sailor in China looking at the moon and how it’s the same moon he saw from Japan. There are no two moons; there’s just one, like there’s only one Earth. The installation is about protecting our planet. It’s massive and made of recycled photovoltaic and solar cells. I still own the sculpture in my warehouse; we showed it in the London Design Festival in 2019.

In 2020, Lexus asked you to design the trophy for its award. How did you conceive of it?

I wanted to highlight Japanese craft. I used urushi lacquer and worked with a craftsman. I discovered Byakudan, a traditional wood technique where they cover the body with silver powder and apply urushi in dark brown. Because of ultraviolet light, the urushi gradually gets more transparent and the silver coating becomes more visible. If you compare the identical trophy from 2020 to the one for 2024, the difference makes the old trophy even brighter. The Design Award puts young talent on a stage in Milan, and after ten years the trophy is sitting next to them celebrating the progress. The award is not an ending, but the beginning—and the trophy celebrates this.

You’re showing again with Lexus this year—what can you reveal about your installation?

They asked me to think about the future of mobility, especially software-defined vehicles. So I created interactive lighting sculptures. Each looks the same, but as you get closer, they’re quite different in terms of the texture of lighting. It’s our biggest project ever. Tangent was born ten years ago with Lexus, so it celebrates this past and being here after a decade. I wanted to get into a depth of thought. I didn’t want to make an entertainment exhibition. I want to make it art.

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Amid the leafy blocks of Charlottenburg once sat a courthouse and women’s prison. Today, thanks to a refresh by local firm Grüntuch Ernst Architekten, the 19th-century brick building is reborn as the family-run hotel Wilmina. Its lobby connects a fireplace-warmed lounge to an atrium staircase leading to the four existing and new penthouse floors, illuminated by bubbly glass pendants.

Each of the 44 rooms and suites—from the snug 118-square-foot guest room to the 800-square-foot garden loft—offer a juxtaposition of minimalism and relaxed elegance. Penthouse rooms flood with light via floor-to-ceiling windows shaded from solar gain with filigree metal chain curtains, spring-mounted so they shift in the breeze blowing up from the lush garden courtyard. Or, indeed, down from the ample rooftop gardens and courtyards, which come with views of one of Berlin’s greener neighborhoods.

In the courtyard, a garden wall creates a path to a smaller garden marked by an old birch tree; this path connects a new bar to its restaurant home. The former is all glowing arches and Nils Lutterbach’s deceptively simple mixology crafted from flavor components organized to his own numerical and alphabetical specification.

They’re the right match for chef Sophia Rudolph, whose seasonal German cuisine—think tasting menus of morsels like seared pastrami with daikon spaghetti and dashi, or a mushroom terrine with pickled beetroot and brown butter brioche, capped by a “lemon pie” with burrata ice cream and candied almonds—earned her spots in the Michelin Guide. If you’re in the mood for dinner and a show, check out the Amtsalon, an art space for temporary projects housed in the former court building.

With his penchant for graceful curves and careful forms, Vladimir Kagan came to define a kind of generous midcentury modern throughout his storied career. But it all began at home: after learning the carpentry trade alongside his father, Kagan designed an initial pairing of table and chair for his parents’ home. His future is all here, in the comforting slope of the chair-back and the just-right balance of the table’s pointed legs. It’s finally available in the present, thanks to a reissue campaign from Holly Hunt. The First Chair and The First Table, produced in 1948 but phased out two years later, are now offered with arms just slightly more sculptural, and in two iterations: one honoring the original dimensions and a second pair whose dimensions were scaled up to fit today’s bigger homes.

The suspicions were correct—Valentino confirmed that Alessandro Michele has joined the Rome-based couture house as its new creative director. He succeeds Pierpaolo Piccioli, who exited the brand last week after a head-spinning 25 years in the role. Michele officially starts his role on Tuesday; his first collection is slated for spring 2025. Michele comes from Gucci, where he originally joined the design studio in 2002 after a stint as senior accessories designer at Fendi. He slowly climbed up the ranks, being appointed an “associate” to then-creative director Frida Giannini in 2011, and took over creative direction of Gucci’s newly acquired porcelain brand Richard Ginori three years later. He was officially appointed to Gucci’s highest creative role in 2015 before stepping down in 2022.

In other people news, the Cape Town–based gallery Southern Guild announced Alejandro Bataille and Andréa Delph have joined as directors of its newly opened location in Los Angeles. The Trust for Governors Island appointed Lauren Haynes as the new head curator and vice president of arts and culture; she most recently served as the Queens Museum’s director of curatorial affairs and programs. Nicola Vassell announced representation of Adebunmi Gbadebo, the artist who explores her family’s Nigerian ancestry and enslavement in America through experimental paper, ceramic, sound, and film works.

When: Until May 2

Where: Praz Delavallade, Los Angeles

What: The multihyphenate creative’s debut show at Praz Delavallade opened over this past weekend, bringing together his works in acrylic, oil, pencil, spray paint, and more mediums under one roof. At the center is Siff’s desire to combine methods of painting and sculpture in a body of mixed-media works that probe the depths of the human psyche.

Society Awards is the premier designer and manufacturer of awards. Collaborations with world-renowned artists such as Kehinde Wiley and Jeff Koons along with acclaimed jewelry designers such as David Yurman and design brands like Nambé and Baccarat denote interdisciplinary excellence.

Surface Says: It’s no easy task to craft a commemorative heirloom to mark a feat of artistic excellence, but Society Awards has distinguished itself as the go-to for some of today’s most discerning names.

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