NAGORI™ Wins Good Design Award 2018, Makes Good Design Best 100

Mitsui Chemicals, Inc. (Tokyo: 4183; President & CEO: Tsutomu Tannowa) has won the Japan Institute of Design Promotion’s Good Design Award 2018 for NAGORI™, an innovative plastic created from seawater minerals. NAGORI™ was developed by Mitsui Chemicals Material Oriented Laboratory (MOLp™), a cross-organizational open laboratory project by the Mitsui Chemicals Group. NAGORI™ received particularly high praise from members of the judging committee, earning selection into the Good Design Best 100 as one of the top 100 winners of the 2018 award.
This year marks Mitsui Chemicals’ debut in the ranks of Good Design Award winners. The company’s TouchFocus™ e-focus instantaneously adjustable eyewear for near and far vision also won an award and made it into the Good Design Best 100.

About NAGORI

An innovative plastic created from seawater minerals, NAGORI™ has a similar texture to ceramic material while also providing strength and high processability, making it an entirely new material with the potential to offer new levels of design freedom. Mitsui Chemicals has used its state-of-the-art compounding technology to grant the material thermal conductivity similar to that of ceramics along with a weighty feel and ease of mass production. In the future, Mitsui Chemicals intends to take the concentrated brine produced as a by-product in seawater desalination and use the raw materials from this for NAGORI™. As a chemical company, we are looking at how to create tangible solutions in pursuit of environmental friendliness, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how as a society we should approach true sustainability.

Good Design Award Judges’ Comments

This product represents an endeavor to address the question of what constitutes the design of the future. The judges praised all of the processes that led to the development of this new material, a plastic with a ceramic-like texture. To tackle the environmental challenge posed by the mineral-rich brine resulting from seawater desalination, the product employs an innovative chemical technology for connecting different materials. The judges were impressed by what they saw as the example of a design encompassing a multifaceted perspective, commenting that they hope this will become the norm in the future.

GOOD DESIGN AWARD

Founded in 1957, the Good Design Award is Japan’s sole comprehensive design evaluation and commendation scheme. Its objective is to improve people’s lives and society as a whole through design, and the G Mark logo has today become a familiar sign of this. The Good Design Award evaluates and celebrates the quality of design — whether tangible or intangible — that has been created to fulfill some kind of ideal or purpose.

MOLp™

MOLp™ is an open laboratory project that aims to make full use of multiple senses and rediscover the emotional appeal and functional value of the materials and technologies that have been passed forward and cultivated by the Mitsui Chemicals Group over more than 100 years. MOLp™ invites you to share our innovative ideas and solutions for society moving forward.
As part of its activities seeking to communicate the appeal of materials to a wider audience, MOLp™ held its first solo exhibition, MOLp Café, in March 2018 with a focus on the theme of MIXOLOGY.