Designing Furniture and Futures

Tokyo's Shibuya district, where trends are born.

Wooden benches beckon outside a popular cafe.

Clean lines contrast with the warmth of natural material.

In fact, these benches are a legacy of 2011's Great East Japan Earthquake.

It began with the design of furniture that could be made by disaster victims themselves with a minimum of tools and materials.

These striking designs and their origin story are drawing widespread domestic and international interest.

What started as a local business has become an initiative that's creating places for people to gather, as well as employment around the world.

We traveled to Tohoku to trace an eleven-year saga that began with a simple bench.

The international interior design industry is waking up to this furniture.

It's a symbol of resourcefulness, born of disaster.

DIY.

Do-it-yourself.

Ishinomaki is 300 kilometers north of Tokyo.

Simple wooden benches and stools seem to be everywhere.

Many were built soon after the disaster.

Every home has a couple of pieces.
We have them too.

Everyone here has at least one.

Ishinomaki was hit hard by the tsunami.

3,970 people perished or went missing.

More than half of the city's 128,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed.

Many residents lost everything.

Over 30,000 were forced to take up residence in temporary housing.

Handmade benches and stools were indispensable for improvised living arrangements.

Over time, this DIY furniture became a symbol of Ishinomaki.

Each piece was built by someone with personal experience of the disaster.

The stools in this butcher shop were built by the owner's family.

Everyone lent a hand.

We all really love them.

Ashizawa Keiji is a Tokyo-based architect.

When disaster struck, he was one of thousands who hurried to Tohoku to offer help.

Temporary housing is very lightly built.

I wondered how people would manage
the terribly cold Tohoku winters.

I wanted to apply a DIY approach
to enhancing people's lives...

in those temporary residences.

Ashizawa designed this stool soon after the disaster.

It's so simple, anyone can build it.

Take lumber available at any home improvement store.

Cut it to standard dimensions, insert screws, and you have a bench.

Ashizawa set up a place with everything needed for DIY furniture building.

Chiba Takahiro is a big supporter of Ashizawa's approach.

Before the quake, Chiba ran a thriving sushi shop.

The tsunami took away his livelihood.

Determined to make a difference, he went to work making DIY furniture designed by Ashizawa.

When disaster strikes
and people's lifelines are cut...

they naturally turn to DIY
as a way to survive and keep going.

They rented space in a local shopping center and stocked it with tools and materials for everyone's use.

This was the birth of Ishinomaki Laboratory.

After Ashizawa returned to Tokyo, he kept supplying Chiba with designs.

In Ishinomaki, Chiba recruited local volunteers to make the furniture.

The media took notice, and interest sprang up all over Japan.

People wanted to own a piece of this simple, handmade furniture.

By December 2011, Ishinomaki Laboratory's DIY furniture was available for sale.

It was now a commercial enterprise.

Ashizawa invited colleagues from around the globe to contribute ideas.

Their creativity spawned a wide range of convenient furniture, all built with the materials and tools of the original benches and stools.

For example, this stackable chair was conceived by Swiss designer Sebastian Marbacher.

Daniel Schofield, a British designer, came up with this wall desk.

So far, more than 30 international designers have contributed furniture concepts.

A designer might take half a year
to come up with something.

You can see the effort they've made.

These elemental designs
have a unique allure.

Yet they're also quite sophisticated.

Ishinomaki Laboratory has exhibited at the Milan Furniture Fair and many other global trade fairs.

The expanding volume of international orders is a major factor in the success of the business.

Today, Ishinomaki furniture competes in international markets on design alone.

Buyers may not even know its origin story.

But memories of tragedy are never far from Ashizawa's mind.

The Ishinomaki Laboratory brand
was born out of disaster.

When we explain it to people,
the disaster inevitably comes up.

As long as the brand continues,
the story of that tragedy will be told.

I think that's very important.

In the fall of 2020, not long before the 10th anniversary of the earthquake, Ishinomaki Laboratory opened its Home Base.

Along with a workshop, the building houses a cafe and guest house.

Now, Chiba and his team are setting their sights on a larger vision— to make Ishinomaki a force for bringing people together.

Here at the Home Base, visitors can demo different DIY furniture.

They can learn how the venture started and experience the allure of simple yet sophisticated design.

The Home Base is a place for locals, visitors, and designers to gather and interact.

This architect traveled 550 kilometers from Toyama to see Ishinomaki Laboratory first hand.

To have ample time to explore, he's staying overnight in the guest house.

Listening to the people here
about how this all started...

makes you want to learn more
about their efforts.

You want to take home
an example of their work.

These women often use the Home Base as a place for remote work.

You see these benches
and stools all over Ishinomaki...

but there's so much more here.

We try something new
every time we come.

When friends from out of town visit,
we show off how hip Ishinomaki is.

Wakabayashi Akihiro oversees the Home Base.

He joined Ishinomaki Laboratory after falling in love with their furniture.

In 2018, he relocated from Tokyo to manage the facility.

It amazed me to see furniture
that can be assembled by anyone.

I hope we inspire more people
to give DIY a try.

It would be great
if we could start a movement.

Many who come here
had never heard of us.

Every new contact
means more word of mouth.

Visitors can also try their hand at making furniture.

Ishinomaki Home Base is a new symbol of the city's resilience.

It's a place where people come together the way they did after the disaster.

After the disaster, we made benches
and put them all over the city.

It's a funny thing, but when
people see a bench, they sit down.

If someone's sitting next to them
they'll strike up a conversation.

A single bench becomes
a focus for interaction.

Sometimes it even leads
to business ideas.

By promoting communication,
a bench can start something new.

That's very rewarding.

A little venture begun by citizens of Ishinomaki is spreading around the world.

Each seed planted outside Japan is growing to fit its environment, creating local employment.

This workshop is located in the Philippine City of Antipolo.

It produces furniture for Ishinomaki Laboratory.

The project is called Made in Local.

Craft workers bring Ishinomaki Laboratory furniture to their countries and communities.

Each collaborating workshop is supplied with the necessary designs.

Materials are sourced locally and vary from country to country.

Local production means more profit for local people.

Sales and marketing are handled by the workshops, with part of the proceeds going to Ishinomaki Laboratory.

It's a cost-effective way for them to deliver furniture to the world.

Kay and Jar Concengco set up their workshop in 2018.

They had no prior experience with furniture, but the Ishinomaki method empowers everyone to achieve superior results.

So they decided to participate in the Made in Local initiative.

We have no background on furniture making.

But, you know, we realized that we only needed some basic tools to begin with.

Today, the Concengcos employ six workers.

The ideals of Ishinomaki Laboratory are spreading beyond Japan and benefitting local communities around the world.

Similar to how it's Ishinomaki’s goal to harness the power of a community, all our workers live in the city— in Antipolo.

So you, your business circulates around that area and it's quite empowering for a small city like that.

Today, the Ishinomaki Made in Local initiative is active in over 10 cities, including London, Singapore, Berlin, and Detroit.

In each location, sustainable manufacturing using local materials for local consumption has become a reality.

We started as a volunteer workshop.

We're now in over ten cities,
including in India in 2022.

The Made in Local project
is therefore quite unusual.

We're bringing our unique origins,
story, and designs to the world.

Simple DIY furniture that helped Ishinomaki stand tall after the tsunami.

Today, the same ideals of self-sufficiency and self-reliance are bringing people together, and spreading across borders.