Shiro Kuramata (1934-91) was a Japanese designer best known for his furniture and interior design, which gave modern culture a creative voice. Many will identify with the chair he designed for the Vitra Design Museum in 1987 entitled How High the Moon (fig 1). The piece was inspired by an old jazz song and is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is conceived as a spacious armchair with intertwined strands of expanded metal; the piece weighs little more than a leaf and can withstand heavy use. His other works include entire storefronts designed for his friend Issey Miyake, for whom Kuramata created over 100 store interiors. One such work is Bergdorf Goodman in New York (fig 2.) designed in 1984, which today sells products for Gucci, Prada, Jimmy Choo, Dolce & Gabbana and others. Although the interiors he designed were created to be useful spaces, his focus was more on aesthetics than function. Within his individual art objects such as chairs, tables, chests of drawers, ladders and many others he focused more on the shape of the object than on its intended use. Kuramata instead seemed to want the presence of the work to surpass its function, which is only possible when there is a symbolic value. One of the best examples of a work of art that meets these requirements was the design of the Miss Blanche armchair (fig. 3) in 1988. The chair is made of acrylic resin and set with artificial roses and aluminum. The title of Kuramata's work, the choice of materials, the color contrast, the creation process and the simple aesthetic combine to create a work that forces the viewer to question whether or not it can be considered a chair. This work of art makes functionality disappear…in the middle of paper…it gave him a sense of breadth of his work and opened up a world outside of design. In 1965 he completed his first independent project, a restaurant called Fork, and then struck out on his own with 19-year-old Tomohiko Mihoya, a friend with whom he worked for the rest of his career. Kuramata continued working on the interiors and began testing materials for new ways of modeling, such as discovering how to glue glass together with a perfect bond between two or three sheets. In 1988 Kuramata designed his Miss Blanche armchair after seeing Tennessee Williams' comedy A Streetcar Named Desire, in which Vivian Leigh played Miss Blanche. Kuramata was influenced by Vivian Leigh's performance and used it as inspiration to create a work saturated with symbolism, which asked the viewer to question the identity of the artwork due to its form and function..