Traveling around Japan can be a challenging exercise in deciding what to attend to and where to look. The commitment to design and  to aesthetic solutions to  otherwise banal infrastructural objects is well beyond what we have come to expect or accept in North America. Even the design of ordinary fixtures such as manhole covers is at another level.

In the 1980s when municipalities were invited to design their own manhole covers, challenging cities to make the mundane interesting. I spotted evidence everywhere that I went in Japan that the phenomenon continues to add vivid, unexpected designs to everyday surfaces.

In the video below, Process X documents how some of the beautifully designed covers are created.