She established her identity in an artistic environment
as a daughter of an architect, Kiyonori Kikutake,
and being brought up in the Sky House designed
by her father. After having studied architecture at university,
she had worked at Nippon Design Center until she
became fascinated by Italian culture and broadened
her perspective on designing under Mr. Angelo Cortesi,
an industrial designer in Milano.
In 1990, she set up Compasso Co.,  Ltd. in Japan.
Furthermore, in 1994, by Japanese Government-Sponsored
Overseas Study Program for Artist, she acquired
the opportunity to learn a broad  array of graphic design
free from preconceived ideas and related to architecture,
space, and the environment at the Royal College of Art inUK.
With an innovative but simultaneously subtle viewpoint
fostered by herglobal experiences as such, she is currently
engaged in cross-genre design from super graphics handling
andmarks, spaces, trains and construction fields to
VI design, product design and book design.