Plantolympics

Design Engineer, Project Director

After graduating from Keio University SFC in 2008 and Tokyo University of the Arts in 2011, he moved to the U.K., where he completed a master's degree in Innovation Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art in 2001. By day, he is engaged in the "quest for innovation" to implement cutting-edge technology into society through the medium of design, and by night he continues to delve deeply and narrowly into culture through DJing, plant cultivation, plastic modeling and soft vinyl creation. His major projects include Selforg, Legmin, and Moon Exploration Rover. Awards received include the CORE 77 DESIGN AWARDS, the Good Design Award, and the runner-up prize in the Tokyo Designers Week 2013 Young Creators Competition.

Seitaro Taniguchi

Art Director, Project Director

Taro Yumiba graduated from Rhode Island School of Design, Graphic Design Department, and interned at San Francisco advertisement agency Attik. He joined THA ltd. in 2009, where he was involved in a wide range of projects ranging from campaign website and service design, to video production and publications. As a type fanatic, he runs an online compendium of world’s type foundries “TypeCache.com”. Under the TypeCache label, he also sells alphabet t-shirts, writes about European fonts, and gives lectures. He joined Takram in 2015.

Taro Yumiba

Creative Technologist, Project Director

Yosuke is director and creative technologist at Takram London, specialising in futures research, digital prototyping and interaction design, and designs for better-informed decision-making about our future.
His recent projects, including Transitions to sustainable futures research with Hitachi, focus on the interplay between people, technology and the planet.
Yosuke was the recipient of the 2018 Swarovski Designers of the Future Award. He has also written for design publications such as Core77 and ICON magazine.

Yosuke Ushigome

Design Engineer, Sound Designer, Project Director

Keisuke Oyama conducted research and development on sound design/musical interfaces while attending Keio University, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies. After graduation, he joined IMG SRC inc. where he worked on interactive installations/mobile applications as an engineer. Sharing Takram’s philosophy on working freely across the fields of design/engineering and software/hardware, he joined the company in 2015.

Keisuke Oyama

Designer

Terushige Enatsu aimed to become an illustrator during his college years. Later, he became interested in web design and graphic design, and followed a path in the design field. He joined Takram following a career at a web design company. At Takram, he is primarily engaged in UI/UX projects, and his notable projects include UI design for local guide apps by NTT Docomo. Graduate of Sophia University, Faculty of Economics Department of Management.

Terushige Enatsu

R&D, concept dev and visualisation of futures and not-for-market products and ideas for external audience

Futures

Is our perception of plant intelligence limiting our understanding of their potential? This was a question we asked ourselves as we considered alternative forms of intelligence.

Research suggests that plants have great capabilities to adapt, to survive in extreme environments and to compete with other plants. We challenged this ‘intelligence’ to sense a great variety of parameters that impact growth and species success, putting these skills to the test in a variety of playful Olympic experiments.

And, as technological research increasingly looks to new forms of artificial, machine and bio-intelligence, is it possible that plant adaptations can provide insights that can contribute to the development of these fields..?

Plantolympics

Project Information

Team