OFFICE HOURS
Our opportunity to share what we’ve collected in the field, with the purpose of supporting professionals and semi-professionals achieve socially, culturally, and environmentally viable ways to incorporate Japanese heritage materials, and the techniques around them, into the creation of their work.
Office Hours are advisory sessions to intended as a curated deep dive into specific sectors, materials, techniques to support research and development targets, responsible product creation and design strategy, and academic or artistic research. Office Hours was designed as a way to have a richer engagement with those who are truly fans of heritage Japanese materials. While we receive these requests all the time, we aren’t interested in simply having a meeting to talk. We would like for you to touch, feel, taste, and experience the materials that create the Japanese art of living.
PURPOSE
DISCOVER ancestral knowledge and local terroir that birth all of the foraged or farmed natural resources to create our heritage Japanese materials and techniques
EXPERIENCE first-hand the feeling, aroma, taste, and sounds of the theory and methodologies behind the work of farmers, restorers, and craftspeople
CONTRIBUTE to our field research by sharing ideas for tangible, practical uses cases
APPLY learnings to professional practices or more sustainable living solutions, particularly toward physical or experiential products that can be used, worn, savored in-real-life today
HOW TO BOOK
Office Hours advisory session is available at Kyoto Research Institute for private bookings only, Mondays - Fridays. The content of Office Hours is curated to your interests. Pricing is a flat rate of 150,000 JPY per group (one to four people). The itinerary is usually as follows but we are flexible to some edits.
10:00 - 10:30 Welcome, introductions, discuss intentions
10:30 - 11:00 Tour our Materials Archive
11:00 - 11:30 Materials sourcing walk
11:30 - 13:00 Hands-on workshop
13:30 - 14:30 Test Kitchen lunch
14:30 - 15:00 Observations, review of materials and techniques, application methods
If you are interested, please email us via the button below, with your full name, organization’s name, intention of your visit, and preferred date.
We are opening the doors to our fieldwork so that you too can participate in the discovery, experience, contribution, and application of heritage materials in our lives today.
Explore the Japanese art of living, and the heritage materials and techniques that inspire sustainable, functional, and aesthetic solutions worldwide.
WHAT ARE HERITAGE MATERIALS?
At Kyoto Research Institute, we define heritage materials as raw natural resources like rice, seaweed, hemp, tea, and bamboo, that through the hands of traditional technique, to transform into the materials that create our everyday living. Examples of heritage materials include washi paper, koji-fermented grains, and earthen walls.
In Japan, we call “to live” or “to create living”, 衣食住 i-shoku-jyu. Quite literally clothing-food-home. These are the three fundamental sectors that constitute the Japanese art of living. Our approach to fieldwork of heritage materials, is tuning in to the archipelago’s raw natural resources and how they have historically been used across each of these sectors.
However, we don’t stop at research.
Our mission is to then go on to explore, experiment, and ultimately execute how these heritage materials have functional, sustainable, and aesthetic value in our lives today.
