Plantolympics

Design Engineer, Project Director

Seitaro Taniguchi finished his bachelor’s degree at Keio University SFC in 2008 and completed his master’s degree at Tokyo University of The Arts, Faculty of Design. He moved to UK in 2011 for following the Innovation Design Engineering Masters program at the Royal College of Art. After working as a freelance design engineer for a while, he returned to Japan and joined Takram in 2013. With exploring the methodology and the value of problem finding and solution providing based on multidisciplinary knowledges and skills, he is primarily engaged in the development of interactive product and installation that includes hardware styling, mechanical and electronics engineering or software development. His notable projects are “Moon Exploration Rover”, “Hydrogen Energy R&D Center”, “Shiseido ‘KANSEI’ Design Lab.” and his awards include Good Design Award, Second Prize at 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