DESIGNBOOM EXPLORES OSAKA ART & DESIGN 2025
Interactive sculptures, wearable statements, and color-shifting creatures take center stage across Osaka‘s urban landscape. As part of Osaka Art & Design 2025, running until June 24, artists and creatives from Japan and abroad present an exciting variety of exhibitions, installations, and site-specific works throughout the city. During our visit, designboom explored various locations — from Takuya Kumagai’s playful capsule toy sculptures at W Osaka to Sayaka Miyata and Midori Hirota’s embroidered world of wonder in the Umeda Twin Towers concourse. Scroll down to discover the projects that caught our attention.
Osaka Art & Design highlights in 2025 | all images courtesy of Osaka Art & Design
A SCULPTURE YOU CAN PLAY WITH LIKE A GACHA-GACHA TOY
For his installation at the W Osaka hotel, Takuya Kumagai reimagines Japan’s iconic capsule toy machines as 3D-printed sculptures in the form of ‘Play Sculpture (Gacha Gacha machine: Type-Atlas).’ Guests can interact with the work just like they would with a real gacha machine — turning the dial, receiving a capsule, and discovering the miniature world inside. This sculptural playful experience introduces a layer of surprise to the design hotel lobby while referencing postwar artist Isamu Noguchi’s concept of forms made for both play and contemplation.
Takuya Kumagai – Play Sculpture (Gacha Gacha Machine:Type-Atlas)
AN EMBROIDERED MUSEUM OF BOTANICAL WONDER AND IMAGINATION
In a collaborative public installation across the windows of the Hankyu Umeda Main Store, Sayaka Miyata and Midori Hirota unveil ‘The New Museum of Wonder: The Gene of Curiosity.’ Influenced by the fantastical illustrations of Ernst Haeckel, the artists construct imaginary organisms that evolve through the fusion of embroidery and AI. As if stepping into a natural history museum of the future, viewers encounter textile specimens that radiate color, texture, and tactile curiosity.
Sayaka Miyata / Midori Hirota – The New Museum Of Wonder: The Gene Of Curiosity
WEARABLE STORIES OF WOMANHOOD ROOTED IN TRADITION
Inside Creative Center Osaka, Polish artist and designer Joanna Hawrot presents her latest collection ‘Unseen Threads,’ a cross-cultural collaboration merging Poland’s textile traditions with the form and symbolism of the Japanese kimono. With designs developed in partnership with Polish artists and portrayed through intimate photographs by Zuza Krajewska, the garments become visual poems, each one exploring female identity through fabric, drape, and gesture. In the Osaka context, these wearable artworks, exhibited at Daimaru Umeda, serve as quiet yet powerful cross-border dialogue.
Joanna Hawrot – Hawrot: Wearable Art – Unseen Threads
POPS OF YOKAI JOY HIDDEN ACROSS THE CITY
Humorous, otherworldly, and rooted in Japanese folklore, Maki Takato’s ‘YOKAI UNITY’ brings a cast of modern, 3d-scanned yokai creatures into the streets and shopfronts of Osaka. Often seen in the corners of buildings or glowing from inside old houses, Takato’s yokai are updated with contemporary expressions and textures, becoming vibrant symbols of life and memory. The installations suggest a new kind of landscape, one where the spirit world and daily routine coexist, reshaped by joy, absurdity, and the artist’s playful approach to traditional mythology.
AloJapan.com