Panasonic collaborates with London Design Biennale to explore ‘Emotional States’ through design

Panasonic, now in its 100th year, partners with the Biennale address the ways in which design can enrich people’s lives: Panasonic Design to reveal Kasa: a set of five objects, designed in collaboration with Kyoto-based craftsman, to respond to and influence peoples’ emotions and behaviour.

Panasonic Design partners with the London Design Biennale to highlight the power of design in affecting our emotional states. The Biennale, which will run for three weeks in September at Somerset House, is one of the world’s fastest growing design moments and will mark Panasonic’s renewed commitment to developing products that enhance our experience of everyday life.

This year Panasonic are celebrating 100 years of design excellence and will showcase Kasa, one of their initiatives from their new design studio in Kyoto, Japan’s cultural capital. Kasa is one of Panasonic’s explorations into the ability of products and design in general to influence our moods, and part of its wider vision for the next 100 years to improve and enrich people’s lives through innovation.

Takehiro Ikeda, Creative Director of Panasonic Design & Director of Panasonic FLUX, commented: “Emotional States is a natural theme for a design biennale. The design of everything around us - our homes, environments, the clothes we wear and the products we surround ourselves with - all have immense power to influence our state of mind. As new technology becomes ever more embedded into our everyday lives, there is no better time to explore the impact design can have on the very human language of emotions that we all intuitively understand and respond to."

This collaboration with the London Design Biennale is a continuance of Panasonic’s exploration into the ways in which products and services can have an emotional resonance and connection with us in our everyday lives. They are testing innovative pairings of different technologies and conducting in-depth research into how our work and home environments are changing, in order to create products that enrich peoples’ lives on an unprecedented scale.

Developed by Panasonic Design to influence behavioural patterns, Kasa is an experiential exploration into the future relationship between people and objects, and very much an example of this.

Kasa is a set of delicate light, which reacts to the behaviour of the user, with the object descending into darkness when approached or handled aggressively. Through reinforcing positive actions and discouraging negative ones, Panasonic hopes to promote a transition towards a new relationship between people and objects, whereby the latter are treasured and handled with care and the former are inspired with feelings of calm and happiness. Visitors to the Biennale will be able to interact with Kasa at Somerset House throughout the Biennale as a response to the theme ‘Emotional States’.

Kasa is one of a collection of objects, crafted by Panasonic’s co-creation project, Kyoto KADEN Lab. The collection has been developed through a series of collaborations with the Kyoto-based craftsmen, to gain a deeper understanding of the manufacturing industry’s origins and subsequently develop new categories of design. It is to be exhibited at Somerset House from 4th to 23rd September at the London Design Biennale 2018. This will welcome around 40 countries, cities and a select number of Special Projects from six continents to build on the success of the inaugural 2016 Biennale. The full range of the KADEN Lab. collection is on display at Panasonic Design’s new studio in Kyoto.