Professor Masayo Ave, born in 1962 in Tokyo, graduated in architecture and design from Hosei University in Tokyo. She worked with I. Ebihara Architect and Associates before moving to Milan in 1990 to study and graduate with a Master of Arts in industrial design at the Domus Academy. She opened her own design studio by the name of “Ave design corporation” in 1992, with headquarters in Tokyo and Milan, received a scholarship in 1996 from the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany, and in 2000 launched her own collection called “MasayoAve creation”. She has received numerous international awards, including the ICFF 2000 Editors Award as well as the A&W Mentor Award 2006, and has been working as a designer for companies such as Authentics, DuPont Corian, Yamaha, and Panasonic. Since 2001, Masayo Ave has conducted research projects and workshops on the design value of tactile sensitivity and, while a professor at University of Arts in Berlin from 2004 to 2007, founded a design institute for haptic interface design, which she integrated into her own office in 2010 when it moved from Milan to Berlin.
