Young Japanese creative designer is Grand Prix winner in 2017 Lexus Design Award contest

“The Lexus Design Award always presents a fascinating survey of the issues currently engaging young designers, and what they consider to be the most important challenges and compelling opportunities for design today. Yet the quality and scale of ambition of the submissions to this year’s award programme was truly exceptional. 
“It was very difficult for us to whittle them all down to 12 finalists, then four prototype winners and finally to the Grand Prix winner, although every stage of the process generated a feisty and enjoyable debate,” said Alice Rawsthorn, Lexus Design Award 2017 judge and a design commentator.
“Each of the four prototype winners has wrestled with complex and significant issues, from the plight of refugees and other homeless people and providing environmental protection for buildings in a beguiling and poetic way, to fusing traditional craftsmanship with emerging technologies and encouraging children to make and play musical instruments. 
“Eclectic and original though their responses are, all the finalists have all addressed the defining theme of the Lexus Design Award 2017, yet, with tremendous imagination, versatility and aplomb,” she added.
The award was delivered to the winner by Yoshihiro Sawa, president of Lexus International, during the opening cocktails of the annual design exhibit of the brand at the LEXUS YET pavilion during this week’s “2017 Milan Design Week”.
Yoshizoe, who graduated from Japan’s Musashino Art University, is currently based in Tokyo, working on art direction and design as a spatial designer for commercial facilities.
He focuses on interpreting the ideas of change, movement and time in space to create designs from both modern and analogue approaches. 
He was already a panel finalist of the 2016 Lexus Design Award with his PLANTS-SKIN entry.
PIXEL is a device that lets people experience the existence of light and shadow with their full consciousness, and it uses a configuration of visors to create a range of optical effects, the young designer explained in his presentation to the Grand Prix panel. 
Through repeated internal reflection, input images are averaged into square outputs. By converting light and shadow into a clear, sensible form, viewers can experience this beautiful fundamental phenomenon, he said.
Design involving two contrasting elements brings them to resonate with each other to move the viewer. Through this, the contrasts are intertwined with each other. 
Light and shadow, inside and outside, one side and another – this screen existing between these two contrasts can be a device for dividing, transforming and ‘connecting’ at the same time.
Yoshizoe was mentored by Snarkitecture for the contest.
First launched in 2013 to stimulate ideas for a better tomorrow, Lexus is celebrating the 5th anniversary of its international design competition, which supports up-and-coming designers and creators worldwide. 
The Grand Prix winner was chosen by an elite global creative-design panel after presentations by the four prototype finalists revealing how they would apply the “YET” philosophy in original and innovative ways.
The Grand Prix-winning work is on display in the LEXUS YET pavilion until Sunday at La Triennale di Milano, the Design and Art Museum in Milan's Parco Sempione, together with the other 11 finalists’ projects.