It's alive

I've just finished my final exams. In the process of figuring out what to do with my summer, which I'm spending in Israel, I went to the website of the Holon Design Museum, pictured below.

A bit of background: for my speaking test I gave a speech in Japanese about the 'Japanese aesthetic' and as part of that speech I talked about the Japanese designer and writer Kenya Hara. I compared his idea of the Japanese aesthetic as 'simple,' 'white' and 'empty' with Ron Arad's over-the-top design aesthetic (I had recently seen this exhibition). Ron Arad designed the Holon Design Museum, and generally designs all sorts of weird things in huge biomorphic shapes, often in either shiny steel or bright red (the Design Museum is reddish brown though). A sofa of his has been used to good effect in the Big Brother house. Ron Arad gives the bombastic personality of a Big Brother contestant to things that wouldn't ordinarily attract a lot of attention, like sofas or ping-pong tables or the dormitory town of Holon. I claimed that this is the opposite of the pared-down, unassumingly simple aesthetic Hara (and pretty much everyone) attributes to Japan.

So imagine my surprise when I found out that Hara is directing an exhibition to be held in the Arad-designed Holon Design Museum this summer. It's like my speech came to life!