Design talk for the drive home.

Overview
Every year, Sangetsu Corporation publishes TREND TALKS®, its forecast for where spatial design is heading. It launched as DESIGN TALKS® in 2023 and took its new name in 2026. We created a podcast to go with it: TREND TALKS RADIO.

Question
How do you reach people who never have time to sit down and read?

Challenge
Architects, designers and craftspeople spend most of the day on site or on the road. In regional areas, that can mean hours behind the wheel. A thick report doesn’t fit into that day. Neither does a lecture.

Approach
Audio does.

Each episode pairs Sangetsu’s own staff with guests from outside the industry, landscape designer Kei Amano of Yard Works and philosopher Rei Nagai among them, to talk through the 2026 theme: 「間」をつくろう, or Let’s make ma. Ma is the Japanese idea of the space between things. It’s a conversation, not a briefing, and it leaves listeners room to form their own view.

Outcome
The drive between jobs became a good time to think about space.