The Okayama Project; The Simple Life

The Okayama Project – The Simple Life is an exhibition that invites the Melbourne Design Week community to witness a work in progress. Presented at CIBI Design store, the exhibition and accompanying talks will reveal a curious, travelling pathway of design aspirations, reality and joy in bringing to life CIBI Okayama, Japan.

Fifteen years after the CIBI story began, co-founder Meg Tanaka’s hometown in rural Okayama provides the setting for a new endeavour, CIBI Okayama. In the town of Kibichuo, the community lives close to nature and life moves at a leisurely pace. Locals tend to their grape vines and vegetable gardens, traditional farmhouses overlooking sprawling rice fields and bamboo groves sway in the breeze. Nestled away in these natural surroundings, CIBI Okayama will provide a taste of the simple life in the Japanese countryside.

In valuing the simple life, CIBI Okayama recognises the ordinary as a good thing, an inverse aspiration for the many communities that harbour within our built up cities. The rural landscape of Japan, generously presents an alternative pathway to move forward. CIBI’s role is not to export design upon a community and then walk away, but rather to live alongside, share our energies as a simple act of replenishment and contribution to a shared tomorrow. A living space that enables life not as a destination, but a loving everyday work in progress.