From flat to form: design’s meaning is still found in working with your hands
Ryota Yokozeki’s exhibition at Milan Design Week 2026 shows what a simple sheet of flat material can become through incessant prototyping iterations.
“Everything begins from flat.” A sheet of paper, a hide of leather, a film of resin are all, in their resting state, potential without direction. “From flat” is the solo exhibition presented by Ryota Yokozeki at the Cavallerizze show, presented during Milan Design Week 2026, which explores the infinite possibilities that open up when you make a plain sheet of material become three-dimensional.
The research is presented through a body of new lifestyle objects developed through direct material experimentation, turning out to be formally varied and remarkably creative. It is more than just a manufacturing demonstration; the show develops a sustained argument about the relationship between material and form, and about what the transition demands of the designer who initiates it.
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From Flat, Ryota Yokozeki:
The designer
Ryota Yokozeki is not a newcomer to this kind of experimentation. Born in Japan in 1985, he spent a decade as an industrial designer at Sony, a tenure that shaped his understanding of precision, engineering constraints, and designing for manufacture at scale. In 2017, he established his own studio, and independent work allowed him to pursue what the corporate context could not always accommodate: experimentation as a primary mode, a spirit of exploration.
The designer traces the project’s roots to something autobiographical and cultural. “As a Japanese, I’ve been familiar with origami since childhood. Creating something three-dimensional from a flat sheet has therefore always remained one of the most instinctive and fundamental ways for me to create.” The Japanese making tradition differs structurally from European conventions, which usually work from solids like carving stone or kneading clay. The origami gesture is instead additive, combinatorial, and reversible, whereas Western ways are more subtractive and dominant.
The exhibition
The show’s central objects are a pair of lamps developed through different material logics. The first is built from sheets of white paper, folded and scored into round volumes that diffuse light with a soft, almost biological quality. Seen in process, the studio table was filled with prototypes, curled shapes and rejected forms.
The second lamp is made from a leather top and paper-based base: tonal materials that bring warmth to the same formal logic. The flat sheet becomes a sculptural wedge, a tilted cone rising from a cylindrical base, catching light in a way that feels architectural. A thin brass hardware line supports the electrical components and marks the seam where the material folds.
Despite having the same premises, the two lamps feel substantially different; one lamp feels delicate and airy, while the other is more grounded and considered.
Unexpected discoveries
Running beneath all of this is an argument against digital tools and ‘over-designing’ in general. “In an era increasingly shaped by digital tools,” Yokozeki says, “working directly with one’s hands continues to spark unexpected discoveries — new ideas, coincidences, subtle tensions, functions, and forms.” While parametric tools and advanced software have definitely been an addition to the field, they will never be able to substitute the freedom and teachings that come from working with your hands.
The exhibition table is filled with Yokozeki’s research prototypes, showing the time and energy spent on creating the final shape. What the designer defends is not a romanticisation of craft but the simple acknowledgement that some knowledge only arrives through physical attempts, failures, repetitions, and surprises. Everything begins from flat.
