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Kan Yasuda, Mira Nakashima
Renowned furniture designer and architect Mira Nakashima was honored with a 2025 Isamu Noguchi Award, which acknowledges highly accomplished individuals who share Noguchi’s spirit of innovation, unbounded imagination, and uncompromising commitment to creativity. Mira’s lifelong work honors the vision of her father, master woodworker George Nakashima—a contemporary and kindred spirit of Isamu Noguchi. These two great Asian American Mid Century Modern designers had studios on the same island in Japan and worked together at Knoll Studios in the 1940s.
Established in 2014 and presented annually, the Isamu Noguchi Award, presented to Mira on November 17, 2025 celebrates individuals from around the world, across various disciplines, whose works demonstrate the highest level of artistic integrity marked by fearless experimentation and a preoccupation with cross-cultural dialogue and exchange. Honoring creatives whose work exhibits qualities of artistic excellence that are shared with Noguchi, the Award also recognizes work that carries significant social consciousness and function.
After receiving degrees from Harvard and Waseda University in Tokyo, Mira returned to the Nakashima Studio in 1970 and apprenticed under her father for two decades. Following his death in 1990, she became creative director of George Nakashima Woodworkers, where she has continued producing classic and newly revived designs as well as her own original works, many of which have been exhibited internationally.
Her designs, collectively titled Keisho (Japanese for “continuation”), preserve George Nakashima’s core principles—harmony with nature, reverence for wood and spiritual craftsmanship—while evolving toward new, deeply personal forms. She has also continued her father’s dream of global Peace Altars, with installations in India, Russia, and the United States.
Under her leadership, the Nakashima property has been named to Pennsylvania’s National Register of Historic Places in 2008, a National Historic Landmark by the Secretary of the Interior, and to the World Monuments Fund list in 2014. Through exhibitions, books (including Nature, Form and Spirit), and collaborations with designers and architects around the world, Nakashima has ensured that the spirit of her father’s philosophy continues to thrive, linking to Noguchi’s enduring vision of art as a means for connection across time.
About Nakashima Woodworkers
Founded in 1945 by the late Japanese American George Nakashima, Nakashima Woodworkers focuses on material and craftsmanship by creating timeless furniture pieces from sustainably harvested hardwoods, particularly American black walnut, made to be aesthetically pleasing and utilitarian at the same time. The studio works only with solid wood and with an immense respect for the material. George believed that natural materials, such as wood, should be “studied, understood and respected”. They custom-mill sustainably harvested hardwoods and select the resulting planks individually for each project.