MUJI Materials Garden by Ladies & Gentlemen Studio.

Commissioned to reflect and explore the essence of the Japanese lifestyle brand’s ethos, Brooklyn-based Ladies & Gentlemen Studio created an immersive installation for MUJI in conjunction with New York Design Week last May. The project celebrated MUJI’s 10 year anniversary in the U.S. and underscored their commitment to supporting and promoting quality design worldwide.

Taking the form of a mini landscape, MUJI Materials Garden featured a series of vignettes with MUJI’s well-loved products shown alongside raw source materials. The designers drew inspiration from simple, high-quality design, bringing light to MUJI’s honest, and unique approach to materiality.

Each vignette connected to the next via a stone pathway, encouraging visitors to ponder the products in a new context by exploring and discovering the inherent beauty of the raw materials they originate from. Ceramic goods sat atop a block of clay used to make them. Glassware emerged from a bed of sand, the main ingredient in glass. The materials’ context, colours, and textures conveyed the connecting element of MUJI’s broad range of home and lifestyle goods.

In the process of creating the installation, Ladies & Gentleman Studio studied the material origins of MUJI’s most popular products, showcasing each of the work’s original state through the presentation of the raw material used to manufacture them. The installation re-contextualised both product and raw material through a series of material-based vignettes, executed in the studio’s signature warm, and playful palette of contrasting colours, forms, and textures.

“We’ve always deeply admired the honesty and simplicity MUJI brings to the world,” said designers Jean Lee and Dylan Davis. “Behind their minimal wares lies a rich relatable character that’s deeply rooted in the material ‘soul’ of an object. With this opportunity, we explored this notion by seeking to reveal the elemental beauty and wonderment in familiar materials’ humble beginnings – all of which are rooted in nature in one way or another. We believe reconsidering objects in new contexts can lead to more connected, gracious relationships with everyday tools and rituals – something MUJI has always stood for.”

[Images courtesy of Ladies & Gentlemen Studio. Photography by Charlie Schuck.]