Kohei Terada | Warehouse TERRADA - User's Voice| TranTixxii - Material transcending ages: Superior material properties and Elegance

Warehouse TERRADAKohei Terada

Transcending preconceptions to create new culture

Warehouse TERRADA
President & CEO
Kohei Terada

"We store more than goods—we store value"

Warehouse TERRADA has developed a multi-faceted business, with the storage of wine, artworks, and recording mediums for video images and music at its core, establishing a new concept of warehousing. The company has been the focus of the mass media as it stores "value," promotes cultural creativity through succession as well as working on developing the area in its home base, the Tennoz region. Warehouse TERRADA also operates PIGMENT TOKYO, a creative complex consisting of a laboratory, an academy, a museum, and a shop. In this complex, the company offers global proposals and communications related to designing titanium TranTixxii as a medium of art expression, fusing the product with artists' creativity.

About the company

Warehouse TERRADA has been in the warehouse business in the Tennoz area at Tokyo's waterfront ever since its founding in 1950. Although the company started off storing rice as a government-designated warehouse, we have taken on the challenge of responding to the changing times and are focused on storing and creating "value" that transcends conventional storage businesses by providing storage for delicate merchandise that is susceptible to the storage environment, such as wine, art and media, offering a storage service "minikura" for individuals that incorporates IT and redeveloping the Tennoz area.

The values of Warehouse TERRADA

There is no definite answer to the question of what beauty is. The value of beauty is not a shared view, but one that exists in each individual's heart instead. That is why the value of culture is also not universal. Warehouse TERRADA is extremely interested in how people view and feel about aesthetics that differ from their own tastes and exceed comprehension. As current society has come to a point in which diversity is under the spotlight, we will face this issue head-on as a company that creates culture, to allow diverse cultures to flourish. Our attitude is important to achieve this feat. We must recognize the values of others, and make sure not to exclude different ideas, and have everyone follow their own path. We are proud to say that this is the path our company has followed. Warehouse TERRADA started off by maintaining the value of stored goods, and evolved to creating diverse value, beauty, stories, and therefore a culture born from goods. We plan to further create connections, understanding, sharing, and experiences of cultural diversities between people. The storage, IT, and Tennoz area established by our company—we want to share this with capable partners to create the future. To learn, create and grow... We want to be a presence that accelerates the creation of diverse cultures.

About PIGMENT TOKYO

Based on these company values, we operate a creative complex consisting of a laboratory, an academy, a museum and a shop called PIGMENT TOKYO in Tennoz, where we are expanding our business.

These facilities offer a unique perspective for research, training, and promotion of art supplies such as pigments, glue, brushes and bristles, methods to use these tools and aesthetics that are born when these are combined—all of which have been cultivated through the history and traditions of mankind. Furthermore, we have creative directors that excel in bringing business together with art, artists, and researchers who are experts at colors and art supplies, which function as a studio, offering project planning and techniques to companies both in Japan and abroad.

A wide array of companies and artists with excellent aesthetic expression create never-before-seen chemical reactions when these diverse entities come together. PIGMENT TOKYO is proud to be a cutting-edge location for culture creation to such multiple and simultaneous chemical reactions, and is one of the leading operations within our company.

Collaborations with the designing titanium TranTixxii

Within these values, Nippon Steel shares our feelings toward our business, especially PIGMENT TOKYO, which gave rise to this collaboration.

We were moved by the great potential of the advanced concept and technology of TranTixxii. This beautiful titanium is the product of the Japanese mentality, and it is incredible how titanium started off as a substance for aerospace and military use but evolved to decorate peaceful and daily lives as a designable and beautiful material, broadening its horizons to include medical uses as well, due to its excellent affinity with the human body and the environment.

The appeal of titanium as a material, and the versatile aesthetic expressions created by the designing titanium TranTixxii, which as luxury material in unmatched anywhere in the world... After this collaboration was proposed to us, we watched the artists of PIGMENT TOKYO fall under the spell of titanium through our many discussions with the TranTixxii brand staff, and we gave the green light.

We believe that this collaboration with the designing titanium TranTixxii has three meanings. One is to propel this unmatched luxury material, designing titanium, to the world's art scene for the first time ever. We want to create a fusion of new culture with this. The second is to promote and support ambitious Japanese companies with diverse processing technologies, gathered together under the TranTixxii brand. We want to hand down the craftmanship and mentality nurtured by the Japanese cultural mind-set to future generations to create new traditions. The third is to offer feedback of the artistic qualities of leading artists collaborating with us and the artists of PIGMENT TOKYO, to designing titanium and its processing techniques. We want to both promote TranTixxii and proactively contribute toward developing technique culture related to this brand.

Japan has countless traditional techniques, which were all innovative ideas at that time. Our company believes that tradition itself is something that continues to evolve toward future cultures, which is created by historical cultures that overlap each other.

As a part of the Warehouse TERRADA art business, we are also working to restore cultural properties and artwork. Instead of simple restoration, we advocate new methods of breathing life into an item, by re-examining tradition and proposing advanced technologies such as digitally archiving pieces.

We passionately believe that our collaboration with the cutting-edge designing titanium TranTixxii is one way to help connect the next generation with traditional Japanese culture.

Future outlook and expectations for TranTixxii

The designing titanium TranTixxii is not a product that is easily recognized. This also means that it is "a blank canvas." And it has extremely higher affinity to our company's mission for creating new value and culture. Furthermore, motivated companies with peripheral processing technologies from around Japan have come together under TranTixxii to put forth extraordinary efforts. This has resulted in the multiple and simultaneous creation of items. We are extremely excited to be part of a new era with this material, guiding it into the art and aesthetic scene to create new culture.

PIGMENT TOKYO is the starting point that will promote the designing titanium TranTixxii worldwide as a base material for art. We will continue to transcend preconceptions and past examples by combining artists' aesthetics to create culture.