The Open Call for the Erottaja Palace is on
Unexpected combinations and new views on design are expected. You can also apply to become part of the Festival Calendar in other ways, too.
Unexpected combinations and new views on design are expected. You can also apply to become part of the Festival Calendar in other ways, too.
Helsinki Design Week turns fifteen years old this year, and we are looking forward to the future. The theme “Learning Climate” offers an equal and open platform that considers the best practices in the making of a climate-friendly urban festival. We will learn from designers that have an eye far to the future and will evaluate our actions through a critical lens. We encourage others to do the same as well, always with an optimistic approach.
In our globalized, ever more complicated world, problems are becoming increasingly wicked. Helsinki Design Week recognises the value and influence in design thinking. As the biggest design festival in the Nordics, we have not only the opportunity to take part in the conversation and do our best, but also the responsibility and the duty to look for the best, most sustainable and open ways of doing what we do.
Open Call
Helsinki Design Week’s event organizers are not only important makers and partners and makers for us but also co-learners.
What would a co-created, even more surprising and sustainable design festival look like? How might we design the encounters between our participants to be even more meaningful? In the learning climate we will create, we will look for ways to even more interactive ways of doing and will develop our ways of collecting feedback. More details regarding the Open Call for events and the development of the process will be given by Programme Director Anni Korkman (anni.korkman@helsinkidesignweek.com).
The application form can be found here.
Main event venue Erottaja 2: DesignPartners19 exhibition
Besides looking to the future, we will take the opportunity to remember where this all began: DesignPartners. The exhibition series that was then followed by our urban festival began at 2001 at the VR Makasiinit where young designers presented their ideas for products that were not yet in production. The year after that, DesignPartners02 went to the Design Museum and offered twenty new product ideas developed by multidisciplinary pairs of makers. The subtitle was “Two visions, one design”. The DesignPartners exhibitions at the Cable Factory during the years 2003–2009 gathered the key companies and makers from the industry and were part of starting the trend of comprehensive exhibition architecture, a versatile side programme as well as pop-up bars and restaurants. The 2010 DesignPartners event in Messukeskus ended the exhibition series for a while.
The initial idea behind DesignPartners is something that is true in everything that we do: collaboration is always the solution. DesignPartners19 brings together doers from different creative fields that will likely have more in common than one might think. In the “Palazzo” at Erottaja, we will introduce a shoe designer to a material innovator, a lighting manufacturer to a fashion designer, and a furniture company to a chef. These new partners in design will then showcase their skills and visions together. This will make the exhibition experience surprising for everyone, and all of the participants will increase their audience through their partner’s own audience. The curator of the exhibition is the founder of DesignPartners, Kari Korkman.
More details can be asked from Kari Korkman via email at kari.korkman@helsinkidesignweek.com.
Main event venue Erottaja 2: Room with a View
Design is a perspective. With design, we solve problems but also define the questions and the problems. The focus of designers is shifting from the objects to the solutions behind them and the use of them in their surroundings. Our work always represents our values, and the choices a designer makes tell a story about time and its phenomena. “Room with a view” is a series of exhibition spaces (rooms of 10–20 m2) that presents different ways of looking at designers’ work and its results.
More details regarding applying for exhibition space and pricing can be asked via email from Anni Korkman, anni.korkman@helsinkidesignweek.com.