Little Tokyo Design Week congratulates Brandon Shigeta for winning the First Golden Astroboy Award!

On July 13, 2011, the soft opening of Little Tokyo Design Week commenced with an opening ceremony along with a Jury Walk for the container and street exhibits. The prestigious jury included the following members:

Sylvia Lavin, Director of Critical Studies and MA/PhD Programs, UCLA Architecture and Urban Design

Junichi Ihara, Consul General of Japan in Los Angeles

Councilwoman Jan Perry

 Jeffrey Deitch, MOCA Director

Bill Watanabe, Little Tokyo Service Center Executive Director

The Jury deliberated and came up with the finalist. The winner of the Golden Astro Boy award. Brandon Shigeta, was officially announced on the final day of Little Tokyo Design Week. 

Comments from the jury:

“There were a few reasons why I thought Brandon’s exhibit was the strongest. It wasn’t a piece that would have typically been found in a museum or gallery. He really conceived it for the container, and it worked well in that context. It also expanded the idea of what design is. And I think it was great how he engaged the audience in that it was filmed and people were able to take a piece of the exhibit. Brandon really thought out all aspects of this project and did a great job.”

ARTCUBE images by Victor Leung.

Brandon Shigeta is a Los Angeles based designer. On completing his graduate studies in architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design Brandon won the prestigious Rotch Travelling Scholarship, which allowed him to visit many countries throughout Asia to document temporary metropolitan phenomena. His photographs were soon picked up by renowned fashion blog HYPEBEAST. Having worked in cutting edge design offices in Atlanta, Seoul and Tokyo Brandon brings a vibrant contemporary sensibility to his graphic design and photography. The art blog Arrested Motion regularly features his singular travel imagery and event coverage  You may see numerous examples of Brandon's work on his travel blog http://brandonshigeta.com/blog/.

Mason Keefe never used to come to Little Tokyo. The Burbank teenager's most prominent cultural influence was her mother's Texan background; Japan was a distant country.
But two years ago, the 14-year-old's passion for comic books led to the discovery of Japanese manga, which fueled an obsession with Japan. Now she adores sushi. She studies Japanese. And she comes to Little Tokyo regularly — most recently this past weekend to check out Little Tokyo Design Week, a five-day festival showcasing Japan's cutting-edge design, technology and pop culture.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/17/local/la-me-little-tokyo-20110717

Don’t let this weekend’s Carmageddon scare you — or you’ll miss out on a lot of green fun in Los Angeles. In addition to Eat Real Festival and Renegade Craft Fair, the first ever Little Tokyo Design Week‘s happening this weekend — an event that’ll inspire you to rethink local food systems, eco-friendly disaster relief, and green travel — especially if you get there by Metro Rail!

Don’t let this weekend’s Carmageddon scare you — or you’ll miss out on a lot of green fun in Los Angeles. In addition to Eat Real Festival and Renegade Craft Fair, the first ever Little Tokyo Design Week‘s happening this weekend — an event that’ll inspire you to rethink local food systems, eco-friendly disaster relief, and green travel — especially if you get there by Metro Rail!
Little Tokyo Design Week showcases new design and technology that links Japan with Los Angeles. The four-day event centers on programs and exhibits at The Geffen Contemporary of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Japanese American National Museum, and Japanese American Cultural and Community Center. But it also includes “container exhibits” — 15 or so interactive mini-galleries in steel storage containers place temporarily throughout the public plazas of Little Tokyo.

I took a walking tour of these container exhibits during the preview yesterday. My favorite? The “Food Futures” exhibit, put together by Victor Jones at the University of Southern California. Slip off your shoes and walk in — and you’ll feel like you’ve entered into a cool minimalist exhibit where grains of rice drip down from the ceiling, each held up by a delicate string. These grains — along with the rice on the floor that will give you a nice foot massage — actually graph out a chart showing global food production and population growth data over a 50-year period. The exhibit draws a relationship between population growth and agricultural systems — considering everything from climate change to food science.

Environmentalists and minimalists will also want to check out the Daiwa House Exhibit Box, which has a prefab emergency disaster vehicle. This boxy structure — built to shipping container specifications for rapid deployment — is basically an off-the-grid, self-sustaining home. The structure — which lifts into a two-story home — is tricked out with its own water supply, composting toilet, solar panels, a lithium ion battery, and a hydrogen fuel cell — as well as a wastewater treatment system and satellite communication system, so it can operate for a whole month.

Toyota’s alternative energy vehicle display’s also on view — as well as many other fascinating design and tech works — from a moving photojournalistic exhibition documenting areas affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan to little model homes showcasing the latest in eco-friendlier small-scale residential design.

Little Tokyo Design Week officially kicks off tonight, with events ranging from the usual panels and talks to an L.A. neighborhood design workshop, to an outdoor film screening of Tonari No Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro), a Little Tokyo Design Week Bar Crawl, and of course, an afterparty on Saturday night.

http://greenlagirl.com/little-tokyo-design-week-green-innovations-and-ideas-from-japan-to-los-angeles/

Toyota’s eco-friendly autos are center stage at a Little Tokyo event this weekend showcasing new technologies and designs from Japan.
Visitors to the Little Tokyo Design Week area can peek inside the Prius Plug-in hybrid, the RAV4 EV battery-electric vehicle and the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Hybrid vehicle that are sitting in the plaza beside the Japanese American National Museum.
The Prius Plug-in will be able to run for 13 miles on power from its Lithium-ion battery, according to Toyota. More than 160 of the vehicles are already being driven in the U.S. as a demonstration program before sales start in earnest next year.
Toyota is working with Tesla on the electric RAV4, which is also expected to become available to buyers in 2012. Meanwhile, the automaker plans to spread more than 100 of its advanced fuel-cell vehicles around the country by 2013 through another demonstration program, with hopes of bringing the technology to market by 2015. 
The rest of the event, which lasts through Sunday, involves more than 15 steel storage containers acting as temporary exhibit space.
The Giant Robot retail chain has a makeshift gallery featuring products such as a “crunching dog” USB stick with a model canine doing sit-ups on the end. There’s a “Robot Box,” with various automatons and other machines. Representatives from USC, UCLA and SCI-Arc have their own boxes too.
Near the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, there’s an extended garden set up on stilts with tomatoes, carrots and beans.
RELATED:
Toyota expands its Prius line
Toyota-Tesla plan to build electric RAV4 shows partnership is serious
Consumer Electronics Show: Robots, robots, everywhere!
-- Tiffany Hsu

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/07/toyota-prius-plug-in-and-electric-rav4-showcased-at-little-tokyo-design-week.html

Architecture meets anime at the first Little Tokyo Design Week, which opened Thursday night in downtown Los Angeles. With the theme "Future City," the ambitious program brings together technology and the creative arts in museum exhibitions, design symposiums, a screening of the Japanese animation classic "My Neighbor Tortoro," robot displays and a closing party with food trucks and -- break out those Sailor Moon outfits -- a "cosplay" contest.
If you you aren't sure who Sailor Moon is or didn't know that cosplay is short for costume play, then perhaps you'll want to get with the program, a mixture of intellectual stimulation leavened with pop culture diversions and gee-whiz digital advances. Local and international designers and students will be exploring visions of new urban living, and events are centered on the evolution of futuristic cities since World War II as well as emerging design trends in Japan and Los Angeles.
Among the highlights is the U.S. premiere of the traveling exhibition "Struggling Cities," which includes urban-planning concepts by Japanese architects during the 1960s. (That includes the Lego totem pole cityscape rendering, above.) "Struggling Cities" is on display at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center through July 31. A retrospective of the work of comics artist Stan Sakai, creator of Usagi Yojimbo (again, if you have to ask ...), and a custom vinyl-toy show featuring the work of American artist Frank Kozik will run through Oct. 30 at the Japanese American National Museum.
During the "Future City" festival, which, adorably, uses Astro Boy as its mascot, Little Tokyo will be dotted with nearly two dozen steel storage units.
These will serve as pop-up container galleries curated by educators, architects and designers from Los Angeles and Tokyo. They will be on site to discuss their individual installations.
For a full schedule of events, which run through Sunday, visit the Little Tokyo Design Week website.
-- David A. Keeps

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/home_blog/2011/07/little-tokyo-design-week-.html

This weekend, the largest Japanese cultural district in California will host the first ever Little Tokyo Design Week, a free four-day showcase of Japanese design and technology with a heavy dose of L.A. ingenuity. With Little Tokyo acting as a lively bridge between the burgeoning Arts District and a revitalized downtown, there's maybe no better place for a global exchange of ideas. "Little Tokyo offers a perfect venue to showcase Japanese innovations to Los Angeles and the world," says founder Hitoshi Abe, who also serves as director of UCLA's Department of Architecture and Urban Design.
This fledgling festival, which runs July 13 to 17, is jam-packed with events including a symposium, museum exhibitions, a Pecha Kucha night, an outdoor screening of My Neighbor Totoro, and tours of the emergency housing unit EDV-01, a new shelter from Japan that supplies enough electricity and water to sustain two adults for a month. A highlight will be 20 storage containers housing mini-exhibits that will turn the streets into a public gallery. Download a map and seek out these unique collaborations between Japanese and American designers. Here are a few of our picks for must-see container galleries as you're wandering the hood.
Robot Box: L.A.-based We Are Matik are importing robots from Japan, and turning their entire container into one huge robot visitors can walk through, with projections and controlled lighting rigged up by the We Are Matik trio and their friends.
Mystery Box: This app, created by Meghan May Daalder and Rene Daalder, will guide you and a stranger (or partner) through most of the exhibits, while simultaneously testing for your compatibility. To get the app, visit the Mystery Box on the MOCA Plaza. 
Tokyo/LA Houses: The festival spends plenty of time making comparisons between Japanese and Angeleno culture. With 20 models of homes from both countries paired side-by-side, this exhibition will reveal commonalities between the two cultures' architectural styles.  
Giant Robot: Likely L.A.'s most famous purveyors of Japanese culture, the store Giant Robot will be creating a pop-up version of their retail experience with art and designer figures showcasing Japan's influence on L.A.
Food Futures: Design firm Fievre Jones and USC architecture students will be plotting out the global food supply against world population in 3D using thousands of nylon filaments. Get a sweet mochi reward for stopping by.
Image showing part of "PLAN C" installation and visual essay by Tim Durfee and Sean Donahue" photo by Carren Jao
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http://www.good.is/post/little-tokyo-design-week-brings-japan-to-downtown-l-a/