I love architecture and design. Business Week has a great story on Jun Aoki, winner of the 2008 top design award in Japan. Check out his story and the stories on the other 15 best designs in Japan.

Every year since 1957, the government-funded Japan Industrial Promotion Organization (JIDPO) has lent its prestigious Good Design logo to a list of new products. Most people tend to associate design with aesthetics. But while high-tech products perennially sweep the top awards—known as the Best 15—the 74-member committee of designers, architects, writers, and academics doesn't limit its picks to whiz-bang gizmos and good looks. Often, it's the products with tiny improvements that win the highest praise. This year's grand prize went to Toyota's iQ, a small car whose roomy interior is a marvel of engineering and space-saving design. Past winners were Sanyo's Eneloop rechargeable batteries and Mitsubishi Motors' "i" compact car.JIDPO says winning products should "improve lives, foster industrial development, and promote export and trade by enhancing the quality of products on the market." That vague objective only seems to encourage selection committee members to scour a broad array of sectors. This year's winners reflect "images of life in the near future and designs that lead the way to next-generation lifestyles," JIDPO said in a press release. The Best 15 and the winners of four other award categories get the lion's share of media attention. They beat out a field of 3,023 entries. But ultimately more than 1,000 products in this year's competition will get to carry the Good Design G-mark symbol, a decision that, critics say, dilutes some of the award's prestige. Be sure to check out the Best 15. The Year's Best Japanese Product DesignArchitect Aoki's Office Wins Good Design Award: Jun Aoki, "the most intellectual architect in Japan," wins Japan's top design prize for his off-kilter Tokyo office building, the SIA AoyamaWhen Jun Aoki's new building, SIA Aoyama, opened in Tokyo earlier this year, it wasn't immediately obvious who the tenants were. Standing 60 meters tall, the smooth all-white tower looked as if it might be apartments or offices or a hotel. And there was something slightly off-kilter about its design: Instead of conventional wraparound windows, Aoki had created large, square punch-out windows of varying sizes that didn't seem to line up. From outside, it's difficult to tell where each level begins and ends. "It looks like an 18-story building, but because each floor has 6-meter-high ceilings, it's only 9," says the 52-year-old Aoki. "I like the gap between appearance and reality."On Nov. 6 the building earned Jun Aoki & Associates one of this year's 15 Good Design Gold prizes, Japan's top design award. The prize committee, appointed by the government-funded Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization, praised Aoki for a plan that "breaks away from the typical notion of what an office building should look like."The SIA Aoyama doesn't jump out at you the way the buildings of Frank Gehry or Zaha Hadid do. You wouldn't notice it, for instance, if you were a half block away on the main thoroughfare that connects Tokyo's hip Omotesando and Shibuya districts. And on a recent weekday afternoon, hardly anyone walking by it stopped to look. Click here for more on Aoki.

Hall is BusinessWeek's technology correspondent in Tokyo. With Hiroko Tashiro in Tokyo.