Search
For The Paper Log: Shell and Core, Satoshi Kondo, the ISSEY MIYAKE project team, and Ensamble Studio turn a byproduct of the house’s pleating process into furniture prototypes and paper objects.
At the ISSEY MIYAKE store in Milan, The Paper Log: Shell and Core takes as its starting point a material that usually stays out of sight. The Paper Log is a compressed roll of paper used in the making of the house’s pleated garments. Thin sheets are fed through the pleating machine with the fabric, protecting it during the process. Once their job is done, the sheets are rolled into dense cylinders for transport and disposal or recycling.
Each roll measures 80 centimeters high and 40 centimeters in diameter. Seen in section, it looks unexpectedly close to a cut log: tightly packed layers of paper, circular markings, a record of pressure and time. That resemblance gives the project its name, but the more interesting point is not the metaphor. It is the fact that this industrial leftover has a body. It can be cut. It can be peeled. It can absorb wax, glue, and hardening agents. It can behave like a mass, a skin, or a sheet, depending on how it is handled.
Satoshi Kondo of MIYAKE DESIGN STUDIO first noticed the potential of the material during a visit to the manufacturer. His first intervention was direct: cutting the Paper Log crosswise to make stools. Those pieces later appeared as seating and installation elements for the ISSEY MIYAKE Spring Summer 2025 show in Paris. From there, the research widened into a collaboration between the in-house project team and Ensamble Studio, the Spanish architecture office known for its physical, often low-tech experiments with material and structure.
The exhibition is organized around two approaches, described as Shell and Core. Ensamble Studio worked with Shell, peeling sheets away from the Paper Log and using them to form crisp paper objects. Some were shaped freely; others were wrapped around existing forms. Treated with hardening agents, the paper keeps every fold, crease, and pleat, fixing what would normally be a soft and temporary surface into something closer to a cast object.
Core, developed by the ISSEY MIYAKE project team, stays with the compressed roll as a solid material. Stools, chairs, and tables are cut, soaked in wax, painted with glue, or tied into bundles. The results are still recognizably paper, but they no longer read as fragile. They have weight, edge, and structure. The pieces do not hide where they came from, which is the strength of the project. The pleats remain visible. The layered sections still show the pressure of the roll. The material is not cleaned up into a neutral design object.
There is no need to overstate the sustainability argument here. The project is more interesting as a study in attention. A byproduct from one of ISSEY MIYAKE’s defining techniques is taken seriously, not as a symbolic gesture, but as a material with its own limits and possibilities. In that sense, The Paper Log: Shell and Core sits close to the house’s larger history: process first, form after. The garment is absent, but the logic of making remains.
Presented throughout the Milan store, the installation places the fragile-looking Shell works alongside the sturdier Core prototypes, with a documentary tracing the exchange between Ensamble Studio and the ISSEY MIYAKE team. The best pieces keep the ambiguity of the material intact. They look made, but not overdesigned; familiar, but not quite nameable. Paper, in this case, is not background matter. It becomes the project.
