Orange Kazuki Chair attributed to Kazuhide Takahama for Simon, 1969

Structure in glossy lacquered wood. The first standard modern piece of furniture on which the glossy lacquer was applied; a timeless chair, composed of slightly rounded panels.

Kazuhide Takahama (Nobeoka, 1930 – Bologna, February 10, 2010 [was a Japanese architect and designer.

Takahama, born in 1930, he studied architecture in Tokyo and after graduating he joined the studio of Kazuo Fujioka.
In 1957 he came to Italy to oversee the architectural layout of the pavilion with which Japan participated for the first time at the XI Triennale di Milano, where he met the designer and entrepreneur Dino Gavina (1922-2007) with whom he undertook a professional collaboration that it would last a lifetime. Consequently in 1964 he moved to Bologna and went to work as a designer of furniture and lamps in the San Lazzaro factory. In these new locations, Takahama was able to collaborate with the famous architect and designer Carlo Scarpa and in the following years he carried out an intense professional activity which led to the creation of furniture and lamps of various types, which still constitute as many works of art, characterized always with great simplicity and formal cleanliness and very often rigorous like Zen compositions.

His colleagues said that he was so silent as to be called “the man of stone” but his presence was clearly perceptible.

Takahama continued to carry out his activity as a designer until his death in 2010.

SIMON was born in 1968 from the meeting of Dino Gavina and Maria Simoncini with some of the major representatives of architecture and modern art. All the cultural experiences and productive testimonies that have given life to a cult collection for design lovers converge in this entrepreneurial adventure. Today these furnishing objects, synonyms of an industrial activity that has been capable of becoming a vehicle for cultural promotion, represent classics, because they are custodians of timeless values to inspire and draw on.