My Weekly Pics #8: Iina Vuorivirta

“My beloved workplace! Beautiful in its rough way, the office building where the design department is located at is called Gulsippa, Yellow Wood Anemone.  The next building, the older part, is called Blåsippa, Anemone Hepatica.”

“I have always been a morning person and here I also come in early, around 6 am. It is great to start the day in a complete silence going through the mail with a cup of coffee.

My workstation is not always the cleanest one. The Finnish Sisu-candy that I bring from home visits are wondering around my papers, prototypes, coffee cups, pencils and other utensils. I always make a quick clean up on Friday afternoon before starting my weekend, however the creative chaos has taken over my table after just few hours on Mondays.”

“The picture of my charming boss is looking after all this.”

“After few hours the open space in the middle of the office building is filled with ripple of conversation when joint breakfast is served. In total at IKEA of Sweden, commonly known as IoS, there are approximately 1000 people working at the main building.”

“The wooden staircase made out of HEMNES-furniture collection is the heart of the space and it is interesting to spot out colleagues and to admire the hustle while sitting between the pillows.”

“The first coffee meeting of this morning started with going through the colour maps of the upcoming collections.”

“The whole second floor of the Gulsippan is dedicated to work-in-progress area where all the collections about to be launched in few years are built and seeking their shapes. It is extremely inspiring and educational to see the development of the process from sketches to 0-series, also when it comes to products which I haven’t actually been involved with. The giant workshop area located just next to my own workstation on the ground-floor is definitely my favourite spot in the whole building. The dozens of workshop masters are the most jovial ones in the working community and always eager to receive some new problems to solve. In the evenings after the actual working days, I always like to go to work on some playful experiments and flesh out even the tiniest ideas to the workshop area. Fortunately, the doors are open 24/7 and that is why I sometimes spend weekends tinkering in the workshop area with a twinkle in the eye.”

“The majority of the working days are spent in front of the computer with the modelling, graphics and drawing softwares but I also spend a lot of time refining the model designs. I’m currently finalising a take-away glass to PS2017 collection.”

“The quick meetings and spontaneous workshops with colleagues keep the day effective and team spirit up.”

“The great part of the workstations quiet down six o’clock in the evening but afterwards the table tennis tables are being revealed. We handle the topics of the day during the game and drink at least one more cup of coffee with the team. The people involved in the game are the overtime workers or the ones who are just too eager to go home.”

Come and meet Iina at the Helsinki Design Week’s and Tallink Silja’s Design Cruise in February. Read more about the cruise here.