Every summer season of the Olympics, athletes carry the Olympic torch from Athens to the host town, wherein the torch ignites the Olympic cauldron at some point during the opening ceremony. Now, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics have unveiled the layout of the new torch, and it’s a lovely ode to Japanese culture, generation, and sustainability.
Thirty percent of the torch, designed by the distinguished Japanese fashion designer Tokujin Yoshioka, consists of aluminum creation waste recovered from transient housing built after the devastating 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. It was made using aluminum extrusion technology, which is also used to fabricate Japanese bullet trains.
The torch’s form is equally considerate. It resembles a cherry blossom, perhaps Japan’s most famous flower. Elegant steel petals sweep up from the torch’s mast to culminate in a flower, out of which the flames will erupt.
“The layout started when I drew cherry blossom logos with children in [a] convalescing region,” Yoshioka tells Fast Company through electronic mail. “The cherry blossoms they drew were all colorful, as if [they] represent a scene in which humans are overcoming and restarting from the catastrophe. I aimed to convey their power to the sector via my layout.”
To date, the design for the Tokyo Olympics is better than anything we’ve seen in preceding years. From its medals, which might be made of forty-seven heaps of recycled electronics, to its very unfashionable pictograms, Japan shows the world that it takes layout seriously.
Which makes Yoshioka a super preference for the Olympic torch. Yoshioka is one of Japan’s most influential designers, a “poet of materials,” who has made fixtures appear to be clouds and telephones resemble holograms. A Fast Company Most Creative Person in 2010, he has labored for corporations like BMW, Swarovski, and Shiseido. He joins different prestigious designers in growing the Olympic torch for the United States of America, such as Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, who designed the torch for the 2012 Olympics in London.
“What I designed isn’t always the shape of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Torch, but the form of the flame itself,” Yoshioka says. “The five flames surrounded via the petals end up one Olympic flame to give desire to all human beings in the world to stay in peace.”
