Industrial Designer

1959 Born in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan
Industrial Designer and the Representative of KEN OKUYAMA DESIGN.
Okuyama served as a visiting professor at Art Center College of Design (Department of Industrial Design) in USA, Tama Art University, Kanazawa College of Art, and also at Yamagata University Faculty of Engineering.
Okuyama is known as “the first non-Italian person to design Ferrari” and the Newsweek introduced him as a Japanese who will be flourished in the new century. Currently, in order to disseminate Japanese manufacturing technology to the world, he is engaged in developing highly value-added products exploiting the distinctive locality.

When Okuyama visited Takayama in Gifu Prefecture in the fall of 2009, he deeply sympathized with the principle of Hida Sangyo aiming to manufacture uniquely Japanese furniture by utilizing Sugi (Japanese cedar) wood. Okuyama came out with the “Sugi” series utilizing Sugi wood and “Buna” using beech wood in 2011. In January 2013, a table made of “Sugi” and a chair made of “Buna” were showcased at Maison et Objet Paris.