There’s something about Japanese furniture that you simply cannot resist! Soothing, minimal, and zen-like, these furniture designs instantly put you at ease. Their soft aesthetics, clean edges, and minimal designs add a sense of calm and Ikigai to any living space. I, for one, absolutely love stumbling upon Japanese furniture designs. I feel they are the perfect addition to our modern urban homes. When we return home after a hectic day of hustle-bustle, we need to step into a space that feels safe, warm, and serene. And this collection of beautiful Japanese furniture designs promise to do exactly that! Integrate some Japanese zen and design philosophy into your home with these furniture pieces! Fireplaces are usually an attraction point in the interior decor of a space, but in Casa Decor, it is more of a hidden gem. The team appreciates traditional Japanese aesthetics inspired by the wabi-sabi philosophy, which encourages an appreciation for imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete things. The characteristics of wabi-sabi aesthetics and principles include asymmetry, roughness, simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and the appreciation of both natural objects and the forces of nature – something that is clearly seen throughout the project and this fireplace. The designer viewed the crack in the wall as a gap in the professional architectural scene and turned it into an opportunity that elevated the room, much like cracks being metaphorical openings leading to projects that make you immerse yourself into a study that will eventually give you winds. Casa Decor is a range of home products designed keeping sustainability in mind. Tea time is a beautiful ritual in Japanese culture and Hasu is a tea table inspired by that zen practice. Hasu transforms itself as the tea ritual progresses making it a contemporary piece of furniture that still pays a tribute to the process. It starts as a minimal compact structure and ends as complete furniture set for tea time. Hasu’s design allows storing an extensive tea collection while presenting it in a unique and clean manner – it is almost like you can fold or unfold the tea time ritual like origami. There is a lot of storage for all the objects needed for tea rituals and the table allows you to present them one by one during tea time, it is all on-site so everything is handy as well as neatly tucked away. The unfolding of the four upper tabletops marks the beginning of the tea time ritual. Extend the seating to four guests by simply pulling the floor chairs from the table. Even when it is not in use, it still upgrades the space as an abstract piece. The Katana chair by Pavel Vetrov has been inspired by the Japanese katana sword and I think we can say this chair is mightier than the sword – given that the war right now is being fought by sitting at home! Japanese culture and philosophy can be seen in the details of the Katana chair. The stitching details on the edges represent the handle of the sword while the colors are carefully chosen to represent the mood. The chair is ergonomically designed so that your back is well supported and there is no pain when you bow to greet people when we are back to socializing. Panasonic has designed a simple solution to draw boundaries between work and play without taking up too much space with their Komoru cubicle and I need to order two when they launch on September 18th, 2020! The Japanese brand has infused this mini cubicle with simple details that help you work efficiently while not adding visual bulk to your interior space. Working from home has had many of us come up with creative ways to stay productive –  this Komoru cubicle saves your time and effort. You can easily assemble the desk and partition at home which is the two main structural components. Unlike a traditional office cubicle, this is four feet tall which allows you to see over the partition walls while still sitting at your desk. Furniture for small spaces is essential and can make the difference between you loving or disliking your cozy zone. So why let an ordinary bulky piece of furniture take up the precious space when a compact chair that can fold up to store in some corner can fill its boots? There are a number of superb examples of folding chairs, but where the Departo folding chair makes room for its exclusivity is its portable form factor – you can set it up on the balcony, for a dinner party – fold, hold it by its leather strap and carry it to where life takes you later! Arguably, many folding chairs are conceived with the concept of portability but their design anomalies leave them high and dry. Departo folding chair however offers a high-quality seating solution conjured up with unification of aesthetics of two cultures. The utilitarian chair is built with Scandinavian design inspiration and focuses on Japanese materiality realized with the steel frame and ash wood legs. The rounded wooden backrest of the chair complements the comfy canvas seat while the leather handle allows for easy carrying. There’s something about Japanese-inspired designs that instantly calm you down, and wash you over with a sense of peace. They always manage to be simple, minimal, and sophisticated. And that’s why they always get me excited! One such example would be TAMEN’s Yosegi Multifunctional Stools. Inspired by traditional Japanese Shinto Kumiki puzzles, this pair of nesting stools feature the Yosegi technique, which is the art of creating exquisite patterns using inlaid wood. TAMEN even utilized the Tsugite technique, which includes bringing together geometric wooden joints, resulting in 12 diamond-shaped columns that effortlessly merge together. Due to these wooden joints and unique columns, both the stools can be combined together to create one space-saving stool! This space-saver can be easily put away for storage. When separated in two, they also function as companion seats or footrests. To please our feline friends and their owners, product designer Yoh Komiyama collaborated with Tokyo-based Rinn to create the NEKO Cat Tree, and to be honest, it’s pretty modern and fancy! The column-like structure features a marble base, with the marble being sourced from Greece. The cool marble helps your cat regulate and monitor its body temperature. Wood sourced from the forests in the Hida region of Japan was used to craft the series of dowels that make up the majority of the column. The dowels encircle a pillar shrouded with hemp cord, which supports three circular levels, acting as comfy platforms for your cat to relax on! Brazilian designer Tatiane Freitas has created a beautiful range of furniture called the My Old New Series which she describes as the materialization of the feelings of lightness while exposing the constant restlessness caused by the perception of how time flows. It reminds me of the Japanese art of ‘Kintsugi’ where you put back broken pots using gold – so every crack is like a gold vein. This has a similar sentiment to it as it completes the furniture with acrylics – I call it ‘Budget Kintsugi’. “It offers freedom and shares the building momentum. Still with questions, spaces, breaths – never-ending, but gaining fearlessly the field of possibilities along the way and hope for the untouchable future,” says Freitas. It is complete within itself even if at a first glance it doesn’t look like it – much like ourselves. The Bookniture Origami Furniture by MoMA is really as creative as a product can get! Inspired by the Japanese art of Origami, it’s a piece of furniture that folds into a book when not in use! When folded, Bookniture is basically a book, one that you can easily slide onto your bookshelf or your desk. When opened, it forms an accordion-style furniture design that can be used as a table, seat, or even a storage shelf. Despite the fact that it can be folded in origami style, the design is quite durable and able to hold quite a bit of weight. So you can sit on it with ease, without fearing that it’ll break apart and you may fall! Okawa City produced a campaign revealing mini furniture for cats! Named, ‘Craftsman MADE’, it includes genuine pieces of furniture which have been scaled down. The result is cute cat-sized furniture pieces including a little bed and a sofa for your feline friends. In fact, these images showcase cats having a very gala time indeed on these furniture designs!