Design with Memory (記憶のデザイン, Kioku no dezain) is a value adding approach to sustainable product design and architecture that was developed by Japanese industrial design professional Fumikazu Masuda], professor at Tokyo Zokei University,[1] and American architect Tom Johnson as a design criteria for use in the fifth and sixth rounds of the International Design Resource Awards Competition (IDRA) between 1999-2003.[2] Introduced at the time of rising global sustainability movement in the 1990s, the term proposes a new way of looking at design with recycled, re-used and sustainable materials and identifies four pathways to approach design to achieve this result of added value.[2]
The first mention of the term "Design with Memory" in the U.S. was in the ARCADE magazine (1997).[3] In an article discussing winning entries to the first three rounds of the Competition Architect Johnson said, “We have come to call it 'Designing with Memory' because sustainable design is based on the recognition of our interdependent relationship with the natural world around us – something we forgot when we had designed products and architecture with the idea that their materials could be wasted and landfilled. It is also 'Designing with Memory' because it means thinking about where the materials come from, how they are used, and where they will go next.”[3]
The first mention of the term “Design with Memory“ in Japan was at the Japanese Design Research Center exhibit in Niigata, Japan (1999). With heightening global interest in sustainable development during this time, the DRA competitions organized under the theme of Design with Memory were funded in part by the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), and the exhibits in Japan were part of a national program of design education with associated seminars. It is said to be the first international design competition under the theme of sustainability to be sponsored by the Japanese government.[2]