If there is one thing everyone knows about Issey Miyake’s work, it is undoubtedly his pleating: an aesthetic signature that the Japanese designer has turned into a symbol, building an entire line around it. His technique, in fact, involves garments already made of heat-sensitive fabrics being inserted into a machine capable of imprinting the famous accordion folds. To protect them, two layers of paper that, inevitably, undergo the same treatment.
These layers are named Paper Log, real “logs” of paper, and in addition to taking on the typical pleating, they are delicately tinged with the colors of the fabrics with which they come into contact. A waste material that, on the occasion of Milan Design Week 2026, becomes the protagonist of the installation The Paper Log: Shell and Core, an exploratory project conceived by Satoshi Kondo for Miyake Design Studio and developed by ISSEY MIYAKE’s project team in collaboration with the Spanish architecture firm Ensamble Studio.
The project is articulated in an installation composed of memory objects (Shell) and furniture prototypes (Core), born from opposite but complementary approaches to the reappropriation of these compressed paper rolls: from byproduct of the maison’s pleated garments to real design material. Everything takes shape in a raw, almost laboratory-like space, eamplifying the experimental dimension and investigating the relationship between material, process and form.
Kondo, together with his team, worked the Paper Logs through upholstery and shaping, transforming them into surfaces that resemble wood. In parallel, the Ensamble Studio team developed sculptural forms that incorporate everyday objects such as lamps and seating made unique by this texture suspended between drapery and wood material.
The result is an installation that reflects on the value of memory and the possibility of rewriting the fate of waste, of those marginal materials that, through design and curation, become central elements, charged with identity and new narratives. An invitation to rethink the very concept of residue, transforming it into a resource, which can be visited at 12 Bagutta Street from April 21 to May 5, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
[📸 isseymiyake.com]
