Play Mountain

I’m back on 99 Percent Invisible discussing Isamu Noguchi’s playground designs, including my own trip to his final, and largest work, Moerenuma Koen in Sapporo, Japan.

Even if you don’t recognize a Noguchi table by name, you’ve definitely seen one. In movies or tv shows when they want to show that a lawyer or art dealer is really sophisticated, they put a Noguchi table in their waiting room. Since it was introduced in 1948, it’s become one of the emblems of mid-century industrial design.

Isamu Noguchi was a sculptor, but he was so much more than that. “Choreographers and fashion designers and art directors and a whole lot of different people across a really wide creative swath look to Noguchi as a point of inspiration,” says Senior Curator at the Noguchi Museum, Dakin Hart.