Press Release
Cadence of the Spiral Kinetic Installation by Yusuke Kamiyama Receives the Silver A' Design Award in Fine Arts and Art Installation Design
The international grand jury of the 2025 - 2026 A' Design Award & Competition recognizes Yusuke Kamiyama for fine arts and art installation design
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 22, 2026 /DesignNewswire/ A' Design Award & Competition has confirmed the Silver A' Design Award in the Fine Arts and Art Installation Design category for Cadence of the Spiral Kinetic Installation by Yusuke Kamiyama, designed for Spline Design Hub Inc.. The result belongs to the 2025 - 2026 A' Design Award & Competition and was determined through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who scored anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
What the Silver A' Design Award Means
The Silver A' Design Award celebrates top-tier designs that embody excellence and innovation. This award acknowledges creations that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also highly functional, reflecting the designer's deep understanding and skill. Silver A' Design Award recipients are recognized for their contribution to raising industry standards and advancing the practice of design. Their work often incorporates original innovations and elicits a strong emotional response, making a notable impact on the improvement of everyday life.
More About Cadence of the Spiral Kinetic Installation
Cadence of the Spiral explores time as something elastic, relational, and alive. A strip of stainless spring steel is shaped into an ever evolving form by thirty mechanical arms moving in subtle, phase shifted rhythms. As the spiral breathes, twists, and reorganizes itself, no two moments are ever the same. Inspired by the mainspring of a mechanical watch, the work reinterprets coiled metal as a vessel of stored energy and temporal flow. Rather than repeating motion, it reveals change through controlled variation, time is not measured but felt.
About Yusuke Kamiyama
Design Engineer, Director, born 1985. He is acting with dual perspective on design and engineering, a founder of SPLINE DESIGN HUB corp., a design firm in Japan. He works in design and development in a wide range of design fields, including product, interactive art, hardware, and software. He is particularly good at designing robots and machines that complexly integrate various engineering elements. Graduated from Keio University Graduate School of Media and Governance. After JSPS Research Fellowship, he started his own company in 2015. From 2019, specially appointed associate professor in Keio University.
Award Record
With this recognition, Yusuke Kamiyama is a winner of 1 A' Design Award.
About the A' Fine Arts and Art Installation Design Award
The A' Fine-Art Design Award is an international fine-art design competition recognizing best fine-art works by leading fine-art artists and creators worldwide. It is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to artists, painters, sculptors and ceramicists from all countries. Typical entries include sculptures, paintings, installations, photographs, drawings and mixed media works. The awarded art designs are published at https://designers.org/design-category/fine-art
About A' Design Award & Competition
Organized annually since 2008, A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The philanthropic mission of the A' Design Award is to advance society through good design, by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Nominations are peer reviewed and evaluated anonymously by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. Eligible laureates receive the A' Design Prize, which includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, uploading a work and receiving a preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. More information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://designers.org/182460
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/182460
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!182460
- Laureate Profile: https://designers.org/d/363529
- Further Information from the Laureate: https://www.spline-d.com/projects/cadence-of-the-spiral
Media Contact
Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953
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Fact Sheet
The Work
- Project
- Cadence of the Spiral Kinetic Installation
- Function
- Kinetic Installation
- Category
- Fine Arts and Art Installation Design
- Discipline
- Communication Design
- Industry
- Arts
- Colors
- Dim Gray, Saddle Brown, Sienna, Dark Slate Gray and Dark Olive Green
- Images
- 5
- Client
- Spline Design Hub Inc.
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Yusuke Kamiyama
- Country
- Japan
- Recognition
- Silver A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2025 - 2026
- Design ID
- #182460
Credits
- Team
- Shin Sakamoto, Kaku Murayama and Fumiya Nakano
- Image Credits
- IMAGE CREDITS: Daisuke Ohki
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- A long stainless-steel spiral is dynamically deformed by independently actuated arms, generating continuous reorganization through tension and release. Unlike static sculpture, the form never settles; it is constantly restructured into shifting orders. The spiral functions as a physical model of time—elastic, unstable, and relational. Controlled irregularity replaces mechanical uniformity, allowing viewers to perceive time not as measurement, but as a living and evolving order.
- Inspiration
- Inspired by the mainspring of a mechanical watch, Cadence of the Spiral reconsiders the spiral beyond its functional role. The tightly wound strip of metal appeared as a vessel containing latent energy and rhythm of time itself. When gently lifted, it responded with subtle motion, as if about to begin a heartbeat. The spiral thus emerged not as an object, but as a physical manifestation of invisible time—an embodiment of tension and release within temporal experience.
- Research
- This practice-based design research explores time as a spatial and kinetic phenomenon. Through iterative prototyping combining mechanical engineering and artistic experimentation, parametric modeling, structural simulation, and motion analysis were employed. Audience observation during exhibitions informed the study. The research identified perceptual shifts generated by micro-irregular motion, demonstrating how controlled instability enhances emotional engagement and contributes to contemporary kinetic art and experiential design.
- Challenge
- The primary challenge was balancing structural stability with expressive flexibility. The spiral required sufficient rigidity to maintain form, yet enough elasticity to allow dynamic deformation. Managing distributed mechanical stress while achieving organic motion demanded extensive iteration. Technological constraints of synchronized actuation and material fatigue also required innovative solutions to preserve both safety and poetic integrity.
- Realization and Technology
- A custom-fabricated stainless-steel spiral plate forms the core structure, paired with a bespoke linear actuation system developed for this work. Most mechanical components—including joints, mounts, and structural interfaces—were custom-designed to enable precise distributed deformation. Motion is coordinated through a PC-based control architecture enabling synchronized, phase-shifted oscillations. Parametric modeling and simulation optimized stress distribution and torsional balance.
- Operation and Interaction
- The spiral slowly shifts between tension and release. As the supporting arms extend and retract, the form breathes, twists, and reorganizes itself. There is no fixed choreography; instead, subtle variations create moments of alignment and misalignment. Viewers experience a continuous transformation—sometimes synchronized, sometimes slightly off—evoking the sensation of time that never fully repeats yet always returns.
- Project Duration and Location
- The project began in Tokyo in March 2025 and was completed in November 2025. Prototyping and structural validation were conducted in Tokyo. Developed in collaboration with Seiko Watch Corporation to explore the cultural and mechanical heritage of horology, the work was exhibited in Japan and is currently being prepared for international presentation.
- Specifications
- Material: Blast-finished stainless spring steel (0.3 mm thickness, 80 mm width) Spiral pitch: 100 mm Number of turns: 10 Control: PC-based control system Installation footprint: Approx. 2000 mm × 2000 mm × 2000 mm Power: AC 100–240 V
- Keywords
- Kinetic art, Spiral structure, Time perception, Mechanical rhythm, Parametric design, Stainless steel sculpture, Dynamic installation, Temporal form
