Kita Toshiyuki Biography
Toshiyuki Kita (1942 - ) is a furniture and product designer. He was born in 1942 in Osaka, Japan. Professor at Osaka University of the Arts. His first pieces, the Wink Chair and Kick Table, are currently in the permanent collections of the New York City Museum of Modern Art and Hamburg, Germany's Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe. He has been a government consultant in Singapore, Thailand and China for the revitalization of their country's planning resources. Very active in revitalizing and promoting local traditional Japanese crafts and industries. Producer of the international home renovation and lifestyle fair “Living & Design” and advocate of the renewal of the Japanese lifestyle, the “RENOVETTA” project. In 2015, his invitational exhibition "Il Lusso Della Natura" was held at the Chiesa San Domenico in Alba, Italy. He has received numerous international awards including the "Delta de Oro (Gold Prize)" Award from Spain in 1990 and the ADI Award "Vettore Internazionale del Compasso d'Oro" from Italy in 2011. He was awarded the honorary title of Commander of Italian Republic, in 2017. His recent publications include "Power of Design" (Nikkei Publishing Inc., 2007), "Local Industry + Design" (Gakugei Shuppan-Sha, 2009), "Venture for Design 1969 - Why I Went to Italy to Design" (Gakugei Shuppan -Sha, 2012) and many others. His DVD "Made with Heart and Soul", a 20-minute documentary on Kita's 40 years of collaboration with various local traditional Japanese arts and crafts, received the Gold Prize of the 2012 World Media Festival (Public Relations/Culture) in Hamburg, Germany, in 2012.
