Wednesday, September 7, 2016

HELSINKI DESIGN WEEK 2016 // ART IN MANY WAYS

Hi there!
Today I woke up with the intention of going around the city, because you know what?
This week is known as the "Helsinki's Design Week" and that means the city is covered by art and creativity everywhere! You can literally see it at every corner and even if I've been walking for hours today, I think I just saw a part of all the things. Let's see a bit of informations about this big yearly event.
Helsinki Design Week was founded in 2005 and it's actually considered the largest design festival among all the nordic countries, and it can include many sides like fashion, architecture and even urban culture!
If you want you can read more informations on the official website, Click Here.

This year's Design Week offered people the possibility to see 12 or more works made from individual designers and students, finnish and international, who had the chance to express theirselves only with the purpose of decorating the city with design. People can follow a map to see all the installations around the city, usually set in particular hidden places, quite fun huh?

Let's see what I discovered today

Starting from one of the most frequented places in Helsinki, the square in front of Stockmann (a big store), we can see this giant transparent "bubble" made of plastic.


This is where it all starts. This plastic installation is called "Super Kolmemen" by Plastique Fantastique and is set around "The Three Smiths" statue, one of the most popular statues of the city, standing since 1932. People can simply enter and relax, talk about the event or ask informations. Sometimes there are presentations or debates regarding a certain subject, you can follow the programme online. 
Let's see how it looks from the inside



Another installation which is pretty near the big "bubble"it's called "Helsinki Timepost" by Joanna Rajkowska and it concernes the theme of the light. In fact the light is one of the most used themes this year. We can see it in many installations. This one was nice to look at because it's formed by actual sentences, regarding Helsinki or Finland in general.


This cluster of neons actually points to different planets, stars and galaxies observable from Helsinki and marking the distance between this installation and them.
Did you know that "the oldest stone in Finland is 3 500 000 000 years old"?


On the same street, we can find another work, this one is called "Local light - Light close to you" by Anna var der Lei, Kristos Mavrostomos and LähiTapiola.
This installation constists of hundreds of bicycle lights reminding us the importance of light traffic when moving in the dark. These lights go on and off in turns.



The next installation was one of my favourites. It was set inside a room where led lights were changing reproducing a big variety of colors. 


The two main themes were lights and different materials. That's why as we step in the room we can see this writing on a wall.



I find this very interesting, like all the objects showed in the room.




These creations are called the "Super synthetic stones" by Valentina Lachner.
The idea behind these works is to combine two of the world's worst matierials, plastic and concrete, in order to create a new material that gives life to unrecycled waste plastics.
The material used can vary from tiles and floors to pieces of furniture.

The room was filled with more creations, like the leather ones, made of pieces of actual leather that was about to go wasted in the trash.

The main wall of the room was formed by a giant variety of pieces made of different materials like glass or plastic which somehow changed their appearance once the color of the light changed.

Let's move now to another of my favourites work, called "Odd birds" by Oiva Toikka for iittala, a famous finnish brand that produces objects in glass.
The glass birds are very famous in Finland, they represent different species of birds made of glass which can have particular colors and shapes. They're a nice object to collect at home, on a library. In honor of the Design Week we can assist at this new collection or birds.






There were too much of them I could write a post only about it!

Movin to the backyard of the Finnish National Museum, we can assist at complete transformation of trees. The work is called "Sense" by Hanna Niskanen, Kiia Kataja and Wenjun Li.
The purpose of the work is to make people feel different textures and surfaces hanging from the trees, they can be hard or soft, warm or cold and have many odd shapes and colors. The pressure made by touch creates an impulse which sends signals along a chain of nerve cells to the brain for further processing.






This was so relaxing to see and touch! I actually pretty enjoyed it.

Last but not least, moving to the National Finnish Library, we can find this weird looking pink cube.


It's called "The Cabinet of Wonders" by the young creative director Laura Väinölä, winner of the Young Designer prize of 2016.
A sign outside the cabinet showed the writing "Please feel free to open the doors". That's why people are supposed to do. Moving around the cabinet opening the many doors checking what's inside.
These are some strange things I found:


clothes made by uncommon materials



some plants growing under a green led light


a miniature of an apartment


Some insect-shaped kites

Well, that's what I discovered today wandering in the city. There were more installations and things that I photographed but decided to not include because the post would have been infinite. If you're in Helsinki during this week I deeply suggest you to take a day off to see these amazing works, it can be a nice idea to make a tour of the city as well :)



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