ALEXCIOUS

KAZUNARI HIGUCHI is a professor at Aichi University of Education. He was born in Osaka prefecture, Japan, in 1964. He learned educational design and finished his master's degree in education from the graduate school of Osaka Kyoiku University. He began to design a series of art works named GRAVIMORPH in 1987, which were meant to depict motion under gravity, and conducted a number of crafts workshops for children, collaborating with local government, museums and corporations. He consecutively participated in the Japan National Woodcraft Exhibition from its first event held in 1988 to the seventh held in 1994 and won the grand prize, first prize, second prize, special prize, encouragement prize and so on. In 1997, he concluded a license agreement with Neaf AG, Switzerland, and released two educational toys named Motus and Ellip in the world. In 2010, he developed a toy named Donguri in cooperation with Asuka Koubou, Saga prefecture, and Takasu Gaku Design, Fukuoka prefecture.

The toy was elected as Good Toy in 2011 and won Good Design Award in the next year. In 2017, he launched a wooden toy brand named ne iro in cooperation with Neba village forestry cooperatives, Nagano prefecture, and set up the website which introduced wooden educational toys he designed, named Nebanomori. He affiliated with the renovation project of Toyota Child-Rearing Support Center, Aichi prefecture, utilizing locally sourced wood. He had private exhibitions at Hamada Children's Museum of Art in Shimane prefecture (2011), the World Children's Art Museum in Okazaki, Aichi prefecture (2014), Tokyo Skytree (2018), Anjo Civic Art Gallery, Aichi prefecture, Hamada Children's Museum of Art, and Warabekan in Tottori prefecture (2019).