Noriko in her home and Le Petit Xiaoxiao café and shop.

Originally from Tokyo, Noriko, 42, has lived in Shanghai for 7 years. She first visited the city through her work for Muji, where she designed interior products and dealt with many Chinese manufacturers. “I have always been interested in production,” Noriko tells us. “The Shanghai area is special as there are many small factories here. I came to China because I wanted to learn the language and get to know the local producers and their thoughts.”

“I came to China because I wanted to learn the language and get to know the local producers and their thoughts.”

Noriko explains that she felt as if she was going back to her own roots when she moved from Japan to China. “Many cultural traditions in Japan actually come from here,” she notes. “I was also intrigued by the fact that Shanghai was so chaotic, so unfinished, and much more aggressive than Tokyo. You know, life easily gets shallow if everything is just beautiful. Here, it’s harder, but more interesting. However, Shanghai is starting to get more organised now, and people are getting more gentle. The city is developing, and maybe becoming less exciting than before, too.”

Noriko’s house is small and white. Built in 1948, it consists of two rooms – a bedroom and a living room where we sit drinking tea from cups hand-made by the host herself. The same cups are sold in Noriko’s home shop: a shelf of items from pottery to woodwork and textiles, most of which are designed by her and made by Chinese artisans – just like almost all the furniture in her house, too. Moreover, the shop selection includes some traditional Chinese everyday objects Noriko has found in random street shops around the city – beautiful and practical things that are often underestimated, and thus hard to find, in the globalising city.

Le Petit Xiaoxiao features ceramics crafted by Noriko and other products designed by her and made by local artisans.

“I’m very interested in primitive design and production methods,” Noriko explains her interest towards Chinese crafts. “In my own work, I try to combine traditional methods with new design.” One of her projects, factory-tshirt.net, sets out to create an online platform for designers and manufacturers to collaborate and learn about different design and production methods through the medium of a classic white t-shirt. On the website, Noriko presents her own T-shirt project involving indigo dying in a farmhouse in Zhoucheng, Yunnan and printing with plaster and soya in Tongxiang, Zhejiang. “It’s nice to know about things,” Noriko says.

The garden in front of Noriko's place is taken care of by her together with her neighbours.

In addition to more traditional crafts, Noriko is also interested in web design and programming. “I don’t like to distinguish between different fields of creative work – people are more complex than that,” she notes. Working at home and for herself, she also likes to experiment with the boundaries between labour and leisure. “I hate the office,” she says. “It’s the most uncreative place in the world.”

“I hate the office. It’s the most uncreative place in the world.”

Like us, many people found their way to Noriko’s through a friend’s recommendation. We heard about the place from Satoko and Kok-Meng, a Shanghai-based couple who met each other at Le Petit Xiaoxiao and later founded KUU design office together. “I wanted to create a small creative community by making my home a meeting place,” Noriko tells us about her activities resonating Chinese communality. “I have made many new friends at my place.”

Tuula Pöyhönen caught by the ONNI shop's security camera.

What made you take your work home in the first place?

It felt ridiculous to keep the flat empty the whole day and rent a space for a shop where I couldn’t work on my products. This way, I can combine design work and shop-keeping just like the clothiers, shoemakers and other similar professionals did in the olden times. Also, it makes integrating family and work life easier.

Are there any downsides?

Sometimes it feels like a burden to have the laundry and other homework around. But I like to take care of that business during the day. When my children come home from the nursery, I want to spend time with them.

Tuula's son Mosse in his workshop. Photo by Tuula Pöyhönen.

ONNI is open by appointment or whenever you’re at home, and you have also lent the space for other purposes (like the OK Do launch party). Does it ever feel uncomfortable that your home is open to the public?

I don’t think about it that much. In addition to the shop, the apartment has been used for photo and film shoots, and if I take on design commissions, I often invite the clients over. My husband doesn’t mind either. Sometimes I’m wondering if it’s dumb to open your home and life, but then again, I haven’t got anything to hide. If a visitor gets uneasy to enter a space that is my home, it’s not really my problem. Once, as a student, I made a performance with my friend wearing our designs in a shop display window. I noticed that rather than feeling uncomfortable myself, many passersby felt uneasy about the fact that they were watching. For me, it has always been easier to invite people to my place and give rather than go to others’ and receive.

“If a visitor gets uneasy to enter a space that is my home, it’s not really my problem.”

What are the best things about having an open home?

As a creative professional, if you’re going to meet new clients, it might be difficult to convey your views and sense of style in an office meeting. I prefer to invite them over in order to show them the atmosphere of my home. It conveys what I’m like and how I work; the mentality that underpins my design. In my opinion, it’s nonsense to claim that a design professional is someone who is able to adopt to different clients’ wishes. I think that clients should go to designers who are on the same wavelength to begin with.

Do you think that it’s significant for the ONNI customers to see where the products come from?

I haven’t started the home shop in order to blazon that instead of child labour ONNI products are home-made. However, I’m personally fascinated by disclosed processes. I like how, in his new book The Interior World of Tom Dixon, designer Tom Dixon reveals his production methods, the materials he uses and what makes him inspired, instead of just displaying a polished end result.

Work on the dining table.

One designer I asked to interview refused because he thought that by revealing how small his home studio is, the brand would suffer. For you, it’s quite the opposite, I guess.

Yes, I don’t feel the need to hide the scale of my business. But perhaps some companies want to appear big because they believe that people want to buy success, that people wish to be part of something bigger. At the moment I’m hoping to grow my company, too – I wish to employ a sewer.

Does working at home set limits to collaboration?

In my case, collaboration is close; people come to my place and we barter. I sew curtains for my photographer and I’m also lucky to have a graphic designer as a husband. Despite working at home, I don’t want to isolate but work with other professionals.

“In my case, collaboration is close; people come to my place and we barter.”

I think people’s homes are some of the most inspiring places one can find. How does your home shape your work?

I have two sons (3,5- and 6-year-olds) and especially when they spent the days at home I had to choose techniques that allowed me to work in short spans. There was no way I could have made patterns, cut or sewn, so I started knitting products with thread. I’m also really inspired by the woodwork of my older son. Having started with making toys two years ago, he is now exploring how pieces of wood can create a space when nailed together. And without him, ONNI shop wouldn’t have its wooden security camera.

Cake by mom.

After nine months of incubation, OK Do opened on September 11, 2009. The launch was a house party, hosted at a friend Tuula Pöyhönen’s place. The party was held in a home because we think it must be one of the most interesting and inspiring venues in the world. Moreover, the first OK Do party started a research project Home-Work-Home which looks at the idea of two merging spheres: home and work. Based on meetings with creative people, the project explores how the mixing of home and office affects creative processes, results and, ultimately, life.

Although we sympathise with Momus who finds internet his home, the meaning of corporeal home and its influence on creative ideas cannot be trivialised. Author Harriet Beecher Stowe has said that “home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserve; it is life’s undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room.” It has the potential to be a place where the rough and rampant ideas can flow freely and undisturbed – in other words, safely.

In the OK Do party, a home functioned as a club for Renaissance Man and Jaakko Eino Kalevi as well as a studio and a gallery for Jesse Auersalo and Daniel Palillo who performed live painting to the music. It was also a restaurant that served cakes by mom and Karelian pies by friends, not to forget it’s role as a cosy exchange arena for Onni goods and OK Do thoughts. The party crystallised the significance of good people to a practice like OK Do. Thank you all!

Live painting kicks off.

OK Do live painting by Jesse Auersalo and Daniel Palillo. Music by Renaissance Man and Jaakko Eino Kalevi.