Design

On the next day Helsinki in fall shows its unfriendly face. It’s raining all day long; needless to say it never actually gets really light. I just wanted to quickly buy my ferry ticket and then use the dark day for a museum and a trip to the Arabia factory, but getting the tickets literally takes hours (more about that later) and I’m really unnerved when I finally get them. The nearby Academic Bookstore has at least some effect in cheering me up, first and foremost because there are JUST BOOKS. A small corner in the front for post cards, a small corner in the back with plastic figures of some comic book heroes and apart from that the whole room is packed with tables and shelves filled with BOOKS. No calendars, reading marks, note books, sweets and worthless decorations that tend to fill the ground floors of most big bookstores I know.  I realize how the tables and the only shoulder high shelves can be distracting, but it is also calming to just float around in a sea of books. Books in Finnish, Swedish, English, German, Russian, French. Two gallery floors hold children’s books and non-fiction and make the room even brighter. I take a look at the Finnish children’s books and talk a little to a young mother glowing with happiness who for some reason came here with her son who is six days old and doesn’t yet look as if he has really arrived in this world.

Iittala window decoration

After quite some time at the bookstore I take the tram to Arabianranta, the part of Helsinki northeast of the center where the factory of the long-standing ceramics and design company Arabia is located. The huge complex also holds and Iittala outlet and the Aalto University Aalto University founded in 2010 as a merger of three universities, among them the University of Art and Design Helsinki. It is named after Alvar Aalto (1898-1976), for many THE Finnish designer, but I also hear critical voices of people who don’t like his architecture and even less the protective way his family prevents changes to any of the buildings he designed.

I take the lift to the top floor, through its windows I get a short view of the inside of the university library, and visit the Arabia exhibition. Outside a curtain of rain hangs in front of the wooden villas nine floors below, up here I am on my own enjoying a handy introduction to the company’s history and the development of their designs and designers. You can also take a factory tour here, I don’t have time for that, but there are some examples of the making of a pot or a plate, from the mould to refining to coloring to glazing. Simply beautiful.

 

Anyway, about design. While Finland was more or less a developing country until the mid 20^th century – that’s what a Finnish lady told me on the ferry back home and others said something along the same line without putting it quite as drastically – it is now regarded as highly progressive in a friendly and thoughtful way, maybe it missed out on the 1960s’ aggressive belief in progress as a straight line heading to the sky, but that is just my wild guess. In 2001, however, Germany was shocked by our high school students’ poor performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) held by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Finland scored highest in all subjects examined in the first three studies and competes for the top position with Shanghai and South-Korea in more recent studies. Emphasis was put on high standard education for students from all parts of society and creative ways of problem solving obviously prosper in this environment.

Helsinki is the World Design Capital 2012 , one of the reasons I wanted to come here this year, even in November. In Germany I get the impression that for many people design is a synonym for unnecessarily expensive versions of necessary items or absence of necessity all together. My impression of Finland is that people here have a broader and more practical understanding of the concept. At least this country and its 5.5 million inhabitants have a surprisingly high output of creative fashion and interior design which is valued at least all over Europe. And apart from the costly brands I see a lot of creative solutions to everyday problems, a small example my mother got me when my parents went to Finland five years ago: a small (elk-shaped…) wooden fork you can put between a pot and its lid to prevent both overboiling and excessive loss of heat.

In Helsinki I find a lot of recycling design and also a small kiosk design agency that concentrates on locally manufactured material for their products. Maybe the way how there is usually a thought or two put into how most ordinary things that you have to deal with quite often in public transport, shops etc. should look like in order to work better (that is, in order to let you instantly understand how they work) is one of the reasons why Helsinki is a very welcoming place and modern in a good way.