To explore the ideas that brought the collection to life, Canada Goose has taken their work with Kouichi Okamoto a step further. Exploring water and the vital role rain plays in all life on earth, Okamoto and Canada Goose have created an immersive installation at next week’s Milan Design Week.

Open to the public — sign up available here — the four-part installation, encompassing ink, sound, rain, and specifically created for the event, uses hydrochromatic ink to reveal the effects of water across time and surfaces. "My main motif is to explore elements that seem invisible, abstract and unexplainable," explains Okamoto. "I am inspired by sound, by light, by the earth’s gravity, magnetic force and the atmosphere that surrounds it […] In my work, I find ways to embody rain and express my fascination for these invisible elements." A creative polymath, Okamoto has always been an artist. First working as a sound designer and music producer, he has been consistently releasing work on Dutch techno label "X-Trax" since the mid-90s. Turning his hand to product design work in 2004, he started Kyouei Design with Ayako Nakanishi and Yuichi Yamaguchi in 2006. His most recent work: releasing the FR-shelter tent as part of his outdoor brand "Field Record", developed under the Kyouei Design umbrella. So, the man knows the outdoors and the elements.

To explore the ideas that brought the collection to life, Canada Goose has taken their work with Kouichi Okamoto a step further. Exploring water and the vital role rain plays in all life on earth, Okamoto and Canada Goose have created an immersive installation at next week’s Milan Design Week.

However, it was while on shoot for the Nomad collection in Wakayama that his groundbreaking installation with Canada Goose really took shape. "I felt the rain physically and my ears woke up to the sounds of rain as if for the first time," Okamoto says. "Wakayama as a word summarizes what I felt about being there on set. “wa” represents harmony, “ka” represents “songs” and “Yama” means mountain. The meaning of Wakayama itself embodies the place in which the mountain sings in harmony".

Early April and the weather in Milan is hot, hinting at the summer to come. In the heart of Zona Tortona in the west of the Italian city, just off the Via Savona and hidden away in a courtyard behind a yellowing 19th century building, a familiar but — given the hot cloudless azure sky above — unusual sound patters, hisses, and hums its way out to the street: it’s the sound of rain.

The sound greets you as you walk through a darkened tunnel playing Canada Goose’s cinematic Nomad film shot in Wakayama prefecture (the one that gazes onto the iconic Mount Fuji) and the island nation’s capital, Tokyo. As that film loops across three eight-foot LED walls, the sound of rain loops from 25 tracks playing from a collection of precise directional micro-speakers directed down onto a mix of kids and adults, most of them with wooden buckets in their hands and throwing water onto the yard’s white walls, revealing pearly gray Japanese script (that can be translated when you hold up your phone camera) while the water trickles down. On the other side of a crumbling stone partitioning wall is a huge gleaming mirrored box that houses the four Nomad jackets — two for women, two for men — hanging over a pool of clear, still water.

Created by Canada Goose in close collaboration with Japanese sound and product designer Kouichi Okamoto, the entire space has just opened that morning for Milan Design Week. It is both tranquil and peaceful yet playful and free, as if anything can happen there. It’s also pretty popular with dozens of stlyish Milanese hanging out there in the shade (and it’s not even lunch time). "I’ve never done something this interactive before," explains Okamoto to me as people experience his and Canada Goose’s space below. "One thing is that of course I want people to see the words surrounding rain in Japanese culture, which is very normal to me, but very, I guess, foreign to them. Having that cultural experience is one thing that I want them to immerse themselves in. "The other is the whole theme of randomness. Rain is random in itself and accidental. The sounds that are in the installation, the directional speakers, you hear different sounds depending on the place you’re in in the venue, and also the words, you splash the water on the wall, and by chance you see this thing emerge which you can touch, a certain word that you get to know the meaning of. This whole theme is randomness. I guess that, and chance, is something that I want people to actually feel."

A creative polymath, Okamoto has always been an artist, governed by senses and the outdoors. First working as a sound designer and music producer, he has been consistently releasing work on Dutch techno label X-Trax since the mid-90s. Turning his hand to product design work in 2004, he started Kyouei Design with Ayako Nakanishi and Yuichi Yamaguchi in 2006. His most recent work: releasing the FR-shelter tent as part of his outdoor brand "Field Record", developed under the Kyouei Design umbrella. However, it was while on shoot for the Nomad collection in Wakayama that his groundbreaking installation with Canada Goose really took shape. He was only there originally to be in the film, recording sounds and testing out the jackets.