KOGA Toru
(Director)
Professor at the Faculty of Design, Kyushu University. Specializes in philosophy. His research focuses on modern and contemporary Western thought. While continuing his thinking on various real issues such as Minamata disease, leprosy, environmental destruction, totalitarianism, and consumer society, he also attempts to construct a basic theory of design.
MASUDA Nobuhiro
(Vice Director)
Lecturer at the Faculty of Design, Kyushu University. Specializing in aesthetics and theory of art, his research interests include the historical relationship between visual technologies such as photography and scientific discourse in modernity. He has also expanded his research to include visual cultures and bio-media art/design, examining these issues from the perspective of media theory and aesthetics as a study of the senses.
OGATA Yoshito
Professor at the Faculty of Design, Kyushu University. He practices industrial design and product design of communication devices, home appliances, furniture, measuring instruments, medical devices, etc., from which he aims to construct concepts and methods for design practice. Toward the construction of a design object that is not bound by any domain, and toward the construction of “design practice” and “design theory” that are not fragmented, he considers the process and methods of design for better manufacturing through the accumulation of designs of ” things” for human beings. Based on such education and research in industrial design, we are newly advancing the future-oriented design, speculative design, resilient design, and the history of design methods.
KURIYAMA Hitoshi
Artist. Associate Professor at the Faculty of Design, Kyushu University. Through his artworks, he explores the equivalence of “nothingness” and “existence”. His major activities include the “54th Venice Biennale collateral event Glasstress” at the Old Glass Factory of Murano Island, Venice, Italy, and “What Dwells Inside” at S12 Galleri og Verksted, Bergen, Norway. http://hitoshikuriyama.com
YUKI Madoka
Associate Professor at the Faculty of Design, Kyushu University. Art historian specializing in the history and theory of photography. Since finishing her dissertation at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany – Ich-Fotografie: Kommunikationsformen der japanischen Fotografie seit den 1990er Jahren (2013, Kadmos Verlag) – she has held curatorial fellowships in photographic collections at the Kupferstichkabinett Dresden, the Municipal Museum in Munich, the Folkwang Museum Essen, and the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, under the auspices of the “Museum Curator for Photography” program run by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Foundation. Between 2013 and 2016 she has worked as an Assistant Professor in the Institut Kunst und Kunstwissenschaft at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
CHEN Ash
Graduate School of Art and Design, Kyushu University, Design Futures Course (Koga Laboratory). Graduated from Shanghai Institute of Design China Academic of Art, majoring in product design. Her current research focuses on critical theory and includes areas such as the ontology of design and the ethics of design. Her undergraduate research topic was “Product Design with Discussion Construction at the Core” (《以构建讨论为核心的产品设计实践》, China Academic of Art, 2020).