Meaningful Design in Helsinki

It’s July. Juhannus a.k.a. midsummer is behind us. This is a complicated time of year. Air and water temperatures will (hopefully) rise a bit over the next few weeks. Meanwhile the days are already getting shorter.

This also means that over one half of the marketing ploy that is Helsinki’s Design Fest 2012 is over. Yet, like the middle of summer, the middle of the WDC-2012-year may be the mathematical middle of this year of design-hype but it’s not the middle in any meaningful way. The season is only just beginning!

We expect hard evidence of Finnish design excellence soon, and not just in a canyon left over by a redundant railway line turned over to cycling.

More in evidence and in the advertising has been the “heart” of Helsinki’s design festival. This is the temporary pavilion behind the Design Museum. A daily programme of events (speakers) there has been trying to enthuse people to learn about design since early May, with varying success.

Apart from the fact that it’s been incredibly cold in the space, perhaps the Helsinki public or the tourists who stray that way simply aren’t interested in being preached at. And it’s worth noting that the Finnish version of the website is a tad more heavy-handed than the English-language page about the great things design can do to make the world a better place. Perhaps the copywriters intuit that Panglossian rhetoric doesn’t sound so good translated from the Finnish into other languages.

But don’t get me wrong. We here at JHJ have admiration for beautiful design. We almost even agree with the myth that says Finnish design has grown organically out of the harsh but beautiful Finnish landscape. (And we recommend the recently published Finnish-language history of Finnish Design edited by Paula Hohti so you get the nuance too).

(We also recommend the design show at Taidehalli which, time permitting, JHJ will cover in a subsequent post, but if not, read the Helsinki Times’ inimitable prose [surely not, Ed.?] on the subject here).

But we do find the Helsinki take on design, er, just a little worthy.

There’s too much of the self-congratulatory about it all. For instance, that design is built into Finns’ lives from birth, when they receive a perfectly designed and perfectly functional maternity package to set them up with the best start in life, materially, technologically, culturally… (this is on show at the Virka gallery). And there’s far too much of design solving this, that and the other global problem.

And as if JHJ needs more grounds for scepticism about design’s (or Finland’s) capacity to fix real problems like, say, the Eurozone crisis, the Baltic or social alienation, today’s Omakaupunki publication tells us that the city can’t even get a simple traffic counter to work properly!

For months the city has been making noises about supporting cycling. To encourage us two-wheelers they have been counting our use of three popular routes.

I never was so clear on why being the two hundred and ninety-seventh cyclist to pass Helsinki Railway Station was supposed to feel encouraging, but it never bothered me either. But it turns out that the machine was so badly designed that it has left a third of us uncounted.

Apparently the counter at the Baana cycle corridor, which goes from Ruoholahti and Helsinki’s future high-rise hotel (see previous post) to the field of asphalt between Kiasma, the Sanoma  and the Music Buildings, does work. And apparently the route has been popular. (Just watch out as you spill out at the eastern end – I foresee accidents to come here.)

Still, design or not, we hope the Baana will get lots of use in the next few weeks before it gets too dark for most cyclists to venture down there.

Designer designs for a design-wharf

Last year Helsinki was gripped with fear lest the main market and its environs be sacrificed to the whims of footloose capital, travelling salesmen and tourists. We were being asked to say yes to the icy design hotel by Herzog + de Meuron. The level of debate was remarkably high as we reported in earlier posts. The design(er) hotel scheme was turned down not because of a knee-jerk reaction against foreigners or glitz, but because people felt and understood that it would destroy something vital.

Since then computer-aided image mongers at the City Planning Department and the architects offices it’s commissioned, have produced a steady stream of New Helsinki bumph. They’ve been eager and able to add sun where it has no hope of shining, offer us sleek and carless roads (left), designer-designed dentists surgeries and other unlikely designs for our shared future.

Architects’ drawings are much loved by JHJ and there’s no reason why a computer-aided version should be any less valued or meaningful than a line drawing of a proposed construction by, say, Karl Friedrich Schinkel. But it just seems that almost all that we’ve seen in this department over the last year and a bit has been appalling – one way or another. It demonstrate alienation from any sense of environment and reality. Most of it presents buildings of blandness or bombast (or combinations of both). It’s the sort of stuff that inspires Britain’s excellent architecture critics, like Jonathan Glancey, Jonathan Meades or Owen Hatherley (where are the women in this list!?) to exercise their verbal virtuosity and architectural, er, nose. They would presumably see/smell these too as examples of architectural homicide and urban de-generation by the usual culprits: shopping, shopping, banks and tourist “attractions”.

Alas, Finland doesn’t really do critique about professional expertise (it’s usually said as an excuse that the pond is too small, nobody wants to or can afford to, dirty their own nest). We are, however, grateful to Arkkivahti (who is not a man). But when the Swiss duo and their peculiar hotel was presented as the obviously progressive choice against all the critics’ varied and thoughtful reservations, the local public just kept coming back with even more thoughtful and sensible objections until the Council eventually voted against.

The BIG DESIGN hotel may be off the agenda, but design-fever has displaced innovation-mania and gripped the city from Herttoniemi to Hietalahti/Punavuori. This is an area much loved for its lack of designed design. Re-branded with the offending d-word plans for its future are now being presented by the Planning Department (at Laituri and the web) to howls of derision from most of the respondents on the website.

“Design Telakka” (telakka = wharf) is the really, really old waterfront area of Helsinki, on the end of Punavuori. Only a decade ago you could see men making ships here. Here in particular Helsinkians could see and sense that their lives were connected to the world beyond the oceans, just as they could appreciate the significance of shipbuilders’ skilled efforts to make real things to a high quality. (Not, as the blurb on one of the designs being showcased, “high-class”, which makes one think of whores – though given that this was also a red-light district in the 17th century already and there is some porn for sale quite close by, it’s an association to make one smile.)

Below, for your delectation, some translated snippets from a random selection of online comments.

The proposal pretty much combines Merihaka‘s and Eiranranta’s negative aspects. (About the design called Hot Dock)

Redundant squares are the bane of Nordic towns. I’ve yet to see one that works. Could turn into car parks though I suppose, it’s what usually happens. (about NOAH)

Totally arse that Nosturi will be demolished and ELMU who do good stuff for young people will have to go to make way for the rich creamy-arses who’ll get another of their galleries into the best spot in the centre, and let young people go somewhere on the urban fringe to party, thanks again City! (about NOAH)

Very good but should be perimeter blocks. Why on earth can’t these idiot architects plan proper blocks any more? (on Living Harbour)

The modern, dark towers don’t fit the surroundings. Even uglier than the sausage building.

Aren’t we getting enough of those in Keilalahti anyway [see JHJ's earlier post] so you’d think they didn’t need to come to spoil the city centre? (On Eighteensixtyfive)

Note, Living Harbour (below and here) seemed to get the warmest reaction (understandably), NOAH also avoided blanket condemnation.

More on natural born designers

Nice to see someone has taken the trouble to pick up this dummy and hang it up somewhere it might be found again. Do you see the bit of brilliant Finnish design on the clip? Seriously, I wonder what Maija Isola (creator of the poppy graphic for Marimekko) made of the success of her motif (she only died in 2001 so would have witnessed its revival among people who weren’t even born when it was launched in 1964).

Granted that the design is probably not there for the benefit of the baby but is an investment made by the parent or other doting adult, and granted that babies are probably not interested in design, might this kind of early learning possibly still have benefits in terms of nurturing great future designers? (Can’t help noting here that image has trumped function. Surely the clip is there precicely to prevent the dummy from getting lost in the first place).

My personal view, as I argued a couple of posts ago, is that the built environment is probably more important to a child’s developing sense of beauty than a logo or a print or a graphic design.

So it’s nice to read that someone on the pages of the Helsinki 2012 World Design Capital website is daring to voice a critical view of the idea that Finns are “naturally” great designers. Miikka Leinonen (described as the creative director of some group I’d never heard of) writes that he’s among those who’ve always found it somewhat oppressive to operate in the long shadow of Alvar Aalto (a view that’s no longer that unusual). He adds, rather ambivalently I think, some observations about Finnish designers’ tendency towards simplicity and minimalism. It can add up, he notes, to reducing what is truly complex (even chaotic) to a clear and simple core. Implication: there might be a loss in celebrating such clarity as common sense (peasant wisdom = maalaisjärki) or as the pinnacle of functionalism.

Given the very consensus-based and, to be frank, often smug and populist tone of Finnish public debate, we here at JHJ began to wonder whether there is a link between this nostalgic minimalism in industrial design on the one hand and lack of nuanced self-criticism in politics on the other. (However, with the Centre Party continuing its farcical internal wranglings, we can report that criticism aimed at others, both in one’s own party and another, is alive and well).

Anyway, Leinonen goes on to make another important point. What designers need to understand are the very complicated needs and experiences of people. These might, indeed, be getting buried more and more under the imperative to “compete internationally”. Alas, this is the peg on which Leinonen ultimately hangs his otherwise delightful little column. Heck, it’s the new ideology, who could resist?

Masters of Arts

If you have time on your hands before the coming week-end, you could do worse than to pop into the Elephant block, one of the soon-to-be-upgraded elements of the infamous Senate Square refurbishment, to catch the end-0f-year show of the Aalto University of Art and Design’s MA students.

There are over 80 displays in a range of styles and themes, but it’s all about the city, in four categories, “enhanced city”, “emotionally designed”, “second skin” and “slow art”. Don’t let the w***y words put you off, the contents do lift the spirit.

So too does the use of the old building even though its earlier glamour has long gone. It served for decades as an administrative building and its the traces of this – fire doors, peeling paint (Finland has it too) and long corridors mostly – that are most in your face. All of which serves the puprposes of the City quite well. The non-elected “regeneration team” or development company Helsingin Leijona can only benefit from demonstrating how shoddy these buildings are and how surely the bling of 21st-century consumerism beats local government bureucrats’ needs hands down. If I’d stayed a local government bureaucrat I’d not have minded the location, must  be said.

Of course that isn’t where the students normally hang out. They are in Arabia, home of the School of Art and Design, still known as Taik and formerly known as Atski (because it once operated in the buildings of the Ateneum near the Railway Station). Arabia is where a ceramics and glass factory of that name was built by a Swedish entrepreneur in the 1870s, where it now has a museum and factory outlets, and where a new urban-ish  neighbourhood has sprung up in just a little over ten years. (Urban-ish and not urban because it lacks street life because it lacks intelligent retail planning, but I’ll leave that for another post.)

As you can see in the photo, life in the area is suppported, inevitably, by a hole in the ground for cars.

Walking around after the end of the semester the place felt a little empty and forlorn even in the warm sunshine. On top of which the labyrinth of old and new buildings with very little signage left me wondering where I might actually be able to enter the main Taik (Aalto) building, or in fact, which is the main Taik building. Is it the multicultured metal box by Pentti Kareoja / Ark-House Architects? Or the Lume building by the omnipresent Heikkinen-Komonen architects with its long corridor tantalisingly inviting behind the glass and … the locked door?

No matter. The City have worked out that this is an ineresting place for those well-educated tourists with an interest in Finnish Design and Architecture to go for a walk, and so they have produced a guide in English that you can download here.

And anyway, once I did find my way inside, despite having to negotiate more slogans, I found some really helpful folks.

Weather and design, design and weather

This is just to remind ourselves that it does get, and stay, cold in Helsinki too. Here’s the link, though we hope by the time you visit the figures will be less spectacular.

There is indeed a lot of weather around, as Americans might say, and not just in Finland but across Europe it seems. But in Helsinki at least there’s less snow [below right], fortunately, as the snow falls of the last few days have been (mostly) lighter than they were at Christmas and as more of these [bottom] have been hard at work.

So far we haven’t dwelt too much on the way Helsinki secured its biggish scoop in the attentionscape by being nominated (or designated or whateverated) World Capital of Design for 2012. So there were our Progagonist, our Narrator and both their loved ones looking forward to being out of the way of spotlights, swarming tourists and unprecedented security measures … we mean not there to experience the 2012 Olympics in London, you see … safe in the relative obscurity but almost always pleasant ordinariness of Helsinki. And then this. And it does seem to be quite a big deal in that the logo and the phrase are routinely cropping up on Finnish websites and advertorials.

Mostly we (here at JHJ) associate design with consumables and the kinds of things that allow prominent product placement (remember that Sex and the City moment when someone crashes through a window with a giant Marimekko poppy in the background? No?) but with innovation and creativity so big an industry, design is now getting a wider airing. It’s architecture, planning, industrial systems, digital technology and probably design of social improvements too (though that’s just a hunch at this point).

And of course design(-ing), as a verb but particularly as a noun, a product, a thing, an object you can appreciate, sometimes touch and often also use for something … er useful, is something that is utterly, boringly, wonderfully everyday for your average Helsinkian. I mean it. I’m not sure that “your average Finn” actually goes in for this stuff with quite the same enthusiasm as rural or northern Finns, but I am sure that the word concept of “household name” was probably coined by a Finglish person.

Arabia, Iittala, Wirkkala, Sarpaneva, Marimekko, Sarvis, Nanso, Fiskars, Buster (er, must go check that one out – they’re boats), Vuokko, Hackman and so many more. Modern Finnish Design is abundantly available in books too, with delicious images. (Wirkkala’s plywood in the flesh – as it were – was so hard not to touch!) It’s hard for young designers to make it in this country with all this baggage. We here at JHJ plead guilty too.

While the hail – yes, ladies and gentlemen, and they say there was thunder in Espoo last night – rattled on the windows last night, we sat there in the kitchen and noticed that we too are afflicted with the Finnish disease: designitis. Tapio Wirkkala vase (a housewarming present so perhaps forgivable), Aino Aalto jug (ditto, ditto), Alvar Aalto circular table and chairs (own snobbish choice, but I do so like them and people appreciate being able to sit without ever bumping their knees on a leg other than when playing footsie) and table mats from Marimekko – our Protagonist’s very own choice – and retro advertising that we are old enough to remember by Erik Bruun. Crickey, even the blimmin’ tulips are from Finland. In December!!!!!!!!!

(They’ve lasted well though…)

Design or Designer? Herzog and De Meuron’s Helsinki hotel scheme

In trying to inject a lighthearted note into a deeply troubling series of events, this blog has dubbed the furore around the City of Helsinki’s plans to erect a new hotel on the site of a former ferry terminal “HDHD”. That’s short for “Helsinki’s Design Hotel Debacle”.

So here’s another chance for an image.

From the Planning Department’s own website – it has more too. (The issue goes to the vote tomorrow. Hence this flurry of activity on this blog.)

The word ‘design’ is used in both Finnish and English. But in this context shouldn’t one use ‘designer’, as in ‘designer jeans’ or ‘designer babies’? In Finnish  it’s not clear if ‘design’ is a verb or a noun or both. A key-symbol, perhaps, with many meanings, in this land so proud of its design heritage.

I’m not sure design of buildings and design of spoons or knives (puukko or leuku) for that matter, should be captured under the same word. There are those who argue that architecture is quite a special kind of thing these days. In urban policies and politics all over the world architecture is a protagonist and very often the super-star. Jean Baudrillard, for instance has written on this (for a short review of his collected writings on the topic, with a few phrases that really hit the nail on the head, click here).

It’s hard not to see some kinds of precursors for today’s architectural megalomania in places like the square in front of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg or, well, the Pyramids.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I found the 2005 book on the topic of megalomaniac (despotic) leaders and megalomaniac building, The Edifice Complex thoroughly entertaining though I can’t judge its scholarly value. (A fun review here). Appropriately its author is the current director of London’s Design Museum, Deyan Sudjic. I suppose smaller products of design (like the VW beetle, or innovations like the Finnish tiskikaappi) can also have huge impacts on history, but there is something about the longevity, footprint and shadow of architecture which sets it well apart from other design activities. Perhaps I’ll use ‘designer’ then in reference to the hotel.