Helsinki uses design to create good everyday life - Children’s Design Week

Children’s Design Week, photo: Aleksi Poutanen, Helsinki Design Week

Design is an essential cornerstone of Helsinki, the capital of the world’s happiest nation and a UNESCO City of Design, where design plays a fundamental role in maintaining the quality of life and building a sustainable future. This September, design can be seen and felt in the city even more than usually, as the 18th Helsinki Design Week and Habitare, Finland’s largest furniture, design and decoration event, take place. Design thinking starts already in school. The City of Helsinki together with Helsinki Design Week will be presenting their second Helsinki Design Award to Arabia Comprehensive School where design and architecture educations starts from the first grade.

Helsinki Design Week – Good everyday life

The festival theme for 2023, Once upon a time, marks the start of a three-year festival period that will culminate in the 20th anniversary of Helsinki Design Week in 2025. The world situation has been uncertain for a long time and requires more planning and stability than before. The main exhibition explores the recent changes in our lives caused by distant working, which challenges our relationship with places – when private becomes public and home turns into an office.

Good everyday life is the theme of the main exhibition and the foundation of everything for the curator Ulla Koskinen, the founder and editor-in-chief of Asun magazine. “Good everyday life means balance, fluency, security, rest and charging my batteries; work and other aspects of life in balance. The importance of home, the workplace and our daily routes is highlighted – they need to be functional, beautiful and pleasant,” she states.

Helsinki Design Week takes place 8-17 September 2023 with over 130 events in different parts of Helsinki, from open studios to talks and exhibitions. 

Photo: Riku Pihlanto, City of Helsinki

Helsinki Design Award for architecture and design education

The Helsinki Design Award is recognition of the deeds and creators that make this city a better place to live. This year, the award focuses on architecture and design education, a field in which internationally acclaimed, multidisciplinary development work has been carried out in Finland for a long time.

At Arabia Comprehensive School in Helsinki, design thinking has been the backbone of the school’s activities and curriculum since 2016. Design thinking is one of the future skills that help the children to face challenges when growing up. School’s own Armu's A is a design process model that provides an easy five step view of the design process.

“Architecture and design education offer children and young people the keys to exploring and appreciating their surroundings as a learning environment, whether it’s a school, a neighbourhood or a city,” says Hanna Harris, Chief Design Officer at the City of Helsinki. “As a city, we can make see to it that, as part of the curriculum, architecture and design education support the wellbeing of children and young people, as well as their opportunities to be active and influence their own living environment.”

Photo: Habitare

Habitare – Together is more

Habitare’s 2023 theme, Together, explores the contrasts of our time. The new themed exhibition highlights this theme from different perspectives, including those related to people’s ways of being together and to objects. Designed by Studio Plenty, the exhibition brings monumentality and the small details of everyday life into the dialogue. The exhibition includes a section that changes daily in which objects that brighten up everyday life but often go unnoticed are highlighted and change hands.

Habitare features international industry influencers, such as Anders Byriel, CEO of the Danish textile company Kvardat, who’s the International Friend of the fair. Visitors can look forward to five days of inspiration, beauty, tips, discussions, current phenomena – and encounters that will create new stories. Finland’s largest furniture, design and interior decoration fair takes place at the Helsinki Expo and Convention Centre 13-17 September 2023 with over 400 exhibitors.

Neri&Hu Exhibition - The Structural Field

Neri&Hu responds to the brand's invitation to rethink exhibition design within the context of international furniture fairs by exploring the possibilities of creating a Structural Field, as a way not necessarily to arrive at a harmonious synthesis, but perhaps to suspend these apparent contradictions during this temporary installation.

There are two sets of dualities that are intersected by the choice of bamboo. Bamboo in Asia and other parts of the world is an abundant, fast-growing, renewable natural material. Despite the versatility of bamboo as a construction material, its lignified fibrous stalks, with their joints and organic profile, often retain signs of natural growth.

In the pavilion design, Neri&Hu sets over 1,000 vertical bamboo members on a regular grid to allude to a sense of the exterior. Through a small entry, visitors are invited to begin a journey through a series of framed views, and intermittent layering of bamboo and spaces beyond.

The relationship between objects and spectators is constantly shifting due to the varying density in the field. The exhibit does not use pedestals or special display mechanisms for the furniture pieces, so everyday scenes from everyday life are displayed - small sitting areas, living rooms, bedrooms, contemplation niches, etc. - are seamlessly integrated into the viewer's path.

There are times when the narrow walkway gives the viewer a glimpse of the vignettes ahead, maintaining a distance between the spectator and the objects. As the field opens up in public areas, the spectator is fully immersed in the domestic setting, interacting with furniture in the presence of the field. By becoming "at home" with the objects, the spectator becomes a participant in the exhibition. By becoming both a spectator and a character on view, the visitor is immersed not only in the phenomenon of the field, but also in one's own projected spaces, a life stage.

The Structural Field | Camerich Exhibition Shanghai CIFF 

Location: Shanghai

Year: 2022

Project Type: Installation & Exhibition Design

Gross area: 907.5m²

Partners-in-charge: Lyndon Neri, Rossana Hu

Senior Associate-in-charge: Chris Chen

Design team: Xiaotang Tang, Bingxin Yang, Peter Ye, Carol Zhu, July Huang, Luna Hong

Photo: Runzi Zhu (if not specifically stated)

Video: CAMERICH

Consultant:

Structure: Architectural Design and Research Institute of Tsinghua University Co., Ltd.

Lighting:  Atelier Zhang Xin

Special Thanks:

Seamboo

www.neriandhu.com