Tokyo's newest design venue is a road no one drives on any more.
DESIGNART Tokyo 2026 (October 30–November 8) spreads some 150 creatives from 13 countries across eight neighbourhoods — Ginza, Roppongi, Omotesandō, Daikanyama and more. Its flagship, AUTOBAHN, occupies the decommissioned KK-Line elevated expressway near Ginza as a sculptural space by studio ALTEMY. The roster runs from Japanese studios nendo and BALMUDA to furniture houses Carl Hansen & Søn and Andreu World and designer Kwangho Lee; Merci co-founder Jean-Luc Colonna d'Istria curates the festival's first design market. The theme is “Hibiki” — resonance.
Furniture and objects on show: the meeting of brand and design, made to be walked through.
This is design made visible at city scale. A festival that threads brands, independent designers and manufacturers through eight districts — and onto a piece of dead infrastructure — is bcd-W's Design lane writ large: the meeting of brand and design becomes a map you walk rather than a hall you visit.
DESIGNART Tokyo 2026 — design spread across eight neighbourhoods.
Reusing a decommissioned expressway as a design stage is the kind of gesture that outlives the festival — a hint of how Tokyo might treat its obsolete infrastructure as cultural space. The citywide format also turns design into a reason to move through the city, not a single venue to tick off.
bcd-W angle — Design × Connect made visible at city scale: a dead expressway, eight neighbourhoods and a roster of brands meeting on one map.
Sources: Futurist Architecture, DESIGNART. Draft — bcd-W News Team. Details to be re-confirmed against official channels before publishing.