ABOUT
CRAFT YOUR STORY
CONDE HOUSE celebrates our 50th anniversary in 2018.
As we enter a new era, we will continue to work with each of our customers, helping them to build a comfortable life that is at one with both nature and the modern world around them. To mark this occasion, we have created a new slogan to light the way as we continue our journey: “Craft your story.”
We build furniture by the forest, with a keen sense of gratitude for what nature has given us.
The beautiful forests of Hokkaido are the starting point of everything CONDE HOUSE is. We use Hokkaido wood for as much of our work as possible, using every last piece of wood to create items that will be part of your daily life for a long time. Treating the forest well is at the heart of everything we do.
Excellent designs come from the creator’s hard work and willingness to accept challenges.
In our factories, cutting-edge processing tools are operated alongside elaborate handcrafting. Conde house’s factory is a sophisticated culmination of manual work and technology, developed through a series of ventures into new forms of craftsmanship. That’s why designers around the world know that “if anyone can do it, conde house can!”
Craftsmanship that shares Japanese esthetics with the world.
Respect for nature and consideration for people are important Japanese values, and we have applied these principles to our craftsmanship throughout all of our years in business. The heart of Japan is reflected in our gentle shapes and intricate functions, and we believe that these values enable us to make everyone’s life more comfortable.
HISTORY
DETAILS
- Founder : Minoru Nagahara
- Established : September 1968
- President : Tetsuya Fujita
- Headoffice : Asahikawa 079-8509, Hokkaido, Japan
- Showrooms : 13 in Japan
- San Francisco : USA
Early on the company’s founder Minoru Nagahara (70) discovered his love of wood as a material. At the same time he recognized that this fascination alone would not be enough to establish and sustain a successful furniture-making operation.
So in the late 1960s, this furniture pioneer set off for Germany to be inspired by European manufacturing technology and design during the course of the three years he worked and studied there.
His further travels in Scandinavia, first and foremost, also had a major influence on him – which is why today’s Conde House design would also appear to be a symbiosis of Japanese influences and Scandinavian elements.Today, Nagahara is the owner of one of Japan’s most important furniture companies with a workforce of some 400 people.
Following the establishment of Conde House Europe, Conde House exhibited for the first time at the International Furniture Show in Cologne (imm cologne) in the spring of 2005. This successful premiere was followed by the opening of the first Conde House showroom in Germany.
Besides their 13 showrooms in Japan, Conde House is represented internationally by subsidiaries in USA and Europe.
DESIGNERS
DESIGN
Conde house firmly aims at seeking new designs and proactively adopts original designs both by domestic and foreign prominent designers. The mutual stem of designs conde house aspires to spread to all over the world is "Nippon no monozukuri" (japanese craftsmanship), such as effective uses of minimal materials, but sophisticated their designs and precise structures based on the modern japanese traits.
ATILLA KUZU
In every object so far, I try to provide a different approach by examining all previous examples and questioning their accepted practises and usages to capture a simple starting point for design. I then apply a form from the endless permutations possible in geometry. While I do this, important criteria regarding the corect relation of users to the product are formed in the effort to provide new ways of usage without alienating users. In general I try to ensure that products are contemporary, modern, and ageless, and that they bridge the time when they were desgined and the present, hoping the impact of their design and creation can be preserved for long periods.
MHK
The designteam Maly Hoffmann Kahleyss (MHK) based in Hamburg emerged from the renowned Studio Peter Maly design and interior architecture in 2009. Since then, numerous designs for well-known furniture manufacturers have been realized by Peter Maly, Birgit Hoffmann and Christoph Kahleyss. Diversity in unity is one of the success formulas of the team.
NENDO SATO OKI
Oki Sato, born in Canada in 1977, established a design firm “nendo” soon after receiving a master’s degree of architecture from Waseda University in 2002. Since then he has been active internationally; selected as one of "100 Japanese people respected in the world" in Newsweek Japanese version; awarded as one of “Designer of the Year” in Italy. His major works can be seen in some world’s major museums, such as MoMa, Centre Pompidou, V&A, etc. The Olympic Cauldron Tokyo 2020 was also his design. Now, he is working on the design of TGV train cars for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
KIYOSHI SADOGAWA
Kiyoshi Sadogawa made a revolutionary change in the process of product design in Japan. When working for a department store, he made a project team to provide one-stop production service, from planning, designing to producing. After establishing his own company "Zero First Design" in 1981, he has worked on not only product design but also shop planning, exhibition booth design, event planning, etc.
DAVID TRUBRIDGE
David is a New Zealand’s best-known furniture/lighting designer. His company manufactures and sells his designs all over the world. In 2008 the French magazine Express listed him as one of the top 15 designers in the world, and in 2012 the Pompidou Centre in Paris purchased his 'Icarus' installation for its permanent collection.
MASAYUKI NAGARE
Masayuki Nagare, born in 1923, was served as a Zero Fighter pilot in the Pacific War. After the War, he traveled all over Honshu Island until the mid-1950s, found stone as his preferred medium, met the founder of CondeHouse when going around Hokkaido, and finally designed Nagare chair for CondeHouse in 2006.
SHIGEYUKI HASEGAWA
Shigeyuki Hasegawa was born in 1972, studied interior design in Washington State University, and established his office "S. Hasegawa Design Office" in 2005.
NAOTO FUKASAWA
Born in Yamanashi Prefecture in 1956. Naoto Fukasawa has worked at Seiko Epson and ID Two (now IDEO San Francisco), founding and heading up IDEO’s Tokyo office. On 2003 Fukasawa went independent and established NAOTO FUKASAWA DESIGN.
PETER MALY
Peter Maly established his first studio in 1970, and another design team in Hamburg later: Maly Hoffman Kahleyss. He and his studio work on product design, interior design projects, as well as work on special trade exhibitions, publications, and his own lectures. In a wide range of capabilities, Peter Maly is recognized as one of today’s leading furniture designers globally. In keeping with his holistic approach to design, this wide range of accomplishments, from designing a chair to public presentations.
MICHAEL POULSEN
Michael C. Poulsen was born in Denmark, 1974. In his early childhood, he already showed his great interest and potentiality in the field of creativity as he participated in his first national design competition at the age of 11. He began his master’s degree in Architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1994 and completed the School of Architecture in 2000. Through the years, he was focusing on refining his “Clean - cut- design” to be more and more detailed. His idea of designs is based on offering solutions as striking perfect harmonies of beauties and functions.
MIKKO HALONEN
I was born in Oulu, Finland in 1976, moved to Turku, Finland, started my design studies at Lahti University of Applied Sciences in 1997, graduated from Aalto University in 2010, founded my own design company in 2001, and have been working with various companies in Japan and Europe.
MICHAEL SCHNEIDER
Designschneider was founded in 1993 by Michael Schneider in Cologne, and it moved to Berlin in 2009 when Jan-Patric Metzger joined the studio. They are dedicated to product design focusing on furniture, tableware, and sanitary ware for international clients, and is committed to designing new products which are unique, beautiful, and functional.
JAKOB JOERGENSEN
Jakob Jørgensen mainly works with wood and steel, and likes to explore possible new expressions in what is, mildly put, a thoroughly tested materials. He carefully ponders the issues he addresses, and once having a clear idea, he goes into his workshop and proceeds to create models and other experiments to shape ideas into finished products. Products with a sculptural expression is always his aim. In his design he strives to create something that looks like an art piece but also fits naturally into everyday life as a functional object.
