Designer Takuto Ohta launched ‘Common Neglect Material (CNM)’, a project focused on repurposing disused objects found in vacant towns into unique public furniture, like chairs. The project spotlights the depopulation of Japan's rural areas.

The depopulation of rural areas in Japan is progressing rapidly. Coupled with its super-aging society, the country sees many of its marginal villages being left behind. At the start of his project, Ohta visited the southern coastline where a fishing industry once thrived. Today, vacant houses, declining local income, and population outflow are sadly crippling this part of Japan now filled with garbage and disused fishing objects lying around. During his visit, Ohta noted countless traces of huge refrigeration facilities next to the port, container boxes and tangled fishing nets, several PVC pipes in the former ray farm along the coast, and many buoys and floats rolling in the nets and storage areas.

Common Neglect Material (CNM) is a unique object no longer owned by anyone but is now consciously repurposed and dropped in one of those marginal towns for people to interact with or rest on.