He is one of the most appreciated young ceramic artists. With more than 10 solo exhibitions had in the past ten years in Kyoto, Tokyo, Aichi, Osaka and Faenza, he was awarded Merit Prize at the 1st Taiwan International Ceramics Biennale in 2004. In 2010 he received the Kyoto City Artist Prize, which is one of the most valuable Japanese art awards. — acidolatte.blogspot.com

Little Tokyo Design Week: Future City (LTDW) celebrates the power and energy of cutting edge design and technology now emerging from Japan and its intersection with current trends materializing in Los Angeles. Design’s ability to move us towards a more sustainable and creative urban lifestyle is at the heart of this four-day festival, which will be open to the public from July 14 – July 17, 2011 (VIP Preview Night: 7/13). — ltdesignweek.com

The fish are part of a small side project the lab is working on in the city of Kesenuma. You probably saw it on the news. It's the city that had a massive boat sitting on a street instead of in the water. — KEIO UNIVERSITY

Today, the names of the new Praemium Imperiale Laureates were announced in London, Berlin, Paris, Rome, New York and Tokyo. The 5 recipients in their respective fields are Ricardo Legorreta (Architecture, Mexico), Anish Kapoor (Sculpture, UK), Bill Viola (Painting, USA), Seiji Ozawa (Music, Japan), and Judi Dench (Theater/Film, UK). — bustler.net

Itami, whose Korean name is Yoo Dong-ryul, was born in Tokyo in 1937 during the Japanese colonial era (1910-45). He studied architecture at Musashi University’s engineering school and led an active career for over 40 years.

In 2003, the architect’s oeuvre was highlighted in a solo exhibition, “Itami Jun, Japan’s Korean Architect,” at the Musee Guimet in Paris, France’s national museum dedicated to Asian art. — koreatimes.co.kr

DESIGN 21 just announced the results of its ‘Help Japan’ competitions, a multi-faceted effort to support Japan and help provide relief to the disaster areas at different stages of the recovery process. Two product competitions, based on the design of a greeting card and symbolic charity accessory, were created to provide mid-level support. [...] The third competition asked for ideas that contribute to long-term relief, recovery and rebuilding. — bustler.net

[Jun Igarashi's] award-winning designs include a temporary theater in Osaka made entirely from soft, vinyl tubes of air, and a conceptual design for a lifelong learning center in Toyota City, Aichi Prefecture. It is clear that Igarashi prefers to focus on projects that have a social emphasis, often taking designs back to the raw basics and then utilizing materials to improve the buildings' natural ventilation and lighting. — search.japantimes.co.jp

The school year began about a month late this year. Rolling black outs meant there was no power for at least a few hours every day, and the buses were not running either (no gasoline) so the school was kind of stranded. The distance between being a first world advanced civilisation and a bunch of people sitting in the dark turns out to be pretty short. — KEIO UNIVERSITY

Architecture rarely goes viral on the Internet, but a video of Toyo Ito's Mediatheque in Sendai taken at the height of the Japanese earthquake has had an extraordinary run as an eyewitness and vertigo-inducing account of what it was like to be inside a building during the magnitude-9.0 earthquake that struck Japan on March 11. — Ada Louise Huxtable, WSJ.com

Pritzker prize-winning Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki uses a transition space to elevate the crematorium's customary banality and create an uplifting place that comforts the grief-stricken. In his Kaze-no-Oka Crematorium in Nakatsu, Maki achieves this by creating a chamber with no roof. — theage.com.au