OK Talk is a platform for bringing people together to discuss and develop the societal role and practices of the creative field. It combines different skills and approaches in events and publications with the aim to generate critical discourse, including asking relevant questions, raising insight and bringing forth tools for designers and artists to put to use.

OK Talk WDC discussion in June 2011 with Carson Chan, Kaarina Gould, Tommi Laitio and us. Photo courtesy of Bernhard Ludewig.

The OK Talk session at DMY opened up a discussion around alternative models of creative practice in Helsinki and Berlin, while reflecting on their value and support structures. The hour-long talk was accompanied by short presentations on different aspects to the topic by each of the participants.

Participants

Carson Chan, Architecture Writer and Curator / PROGRAM

Carson Chan presented PROGRAM, an initiative for art and architecture collaborations that tests the disciplinary boundaries of architecture through exhibitions, events and a residency programme in Mitte, Berlin and online.

Kaarina Gould, Programme Director / World Design Capital Helsinki 2012

Kaarina Gould presented Helsinki’s agenda for the World Design Capital 2012 project, which uses design to support cultural, social, and economic development in the city. The year of events under the theme ‘Open Helsinki’ aims to set a global standard, while serving as a meeting place for the world’s design community.

Tommi Laitio, Researcher / Demos Helsinki

Tommi Laitio presented his work on cultural politics and citizen participation with Demos Helsinki, a think tank for developing democracy to suit the needs and capabilities of the 21st century and the Dutch platform Premsela’s Republic of Design programme, striving to stimulate the development of design into an open cultural field.

Anni Puolakka & Jenna Sutela, Writers and Curators / OK Do

Anni Puolakka and Jenna Sutela presented a residency project that turns empty spaces in different cities into arenas of site-specific collaboration as well as temporary homes for OK Do, their peripatetic creative practice and online journal for bridging design, art and society.

Carson Chan, Kaarina Gould and Tommi Laitio. Photo courtesy of Bernhard Ludewig.

The event also saw the launch of ‘OK Talk Helsinki/London’, a book drawing from a series of earlier OK Talk discussions between twenty Finland- and UK-based designers, artists and theorists in autumn 2010. In addition to the best parts of the talks, the publication widens the discourse, offering new perspectives to design through essays, interviews and visual material. It is edited by OK Do and designed by Åh, including contributions by Åbäke, Bryan Boyer, Martti Kalliala, Zak Kyes, Markus Miessen, Karen Mirza, Anni Puolakka, Jenna Sutela, Teemu Suviala and Finn Williams.

The project has been supported by World Design Capital Helsinki 2012, The Finnish Institute in London and British Council Finland.

Boy Vereecken in his studio at Sint Lucas College of Art. Photo courtesy of Marthe Prins.

Monitor MEMEX, a publishing platform established as part of Sint Lucas College of Art, Antwerp last autumn caught my eye after our discussions with Jenna about the emerging models of design education. So, I met up with its founder Boy Vereecken, a designer and advising researcher at Sint Lucas, to talk about the function of the platform.

How did you come up with the idea to establish Monitor MEMEX?

Practicing both as a researcher and graphic designer at Sint Lucas, my task is to explore the contemporary professional field in relation to the school. Consequently, one of the main motives for establishing Monitor MEMEX was to encourage students to explore pragmatic ways of practicing research in the context of a design department. Finding Sint Lucas quite fragmented, I felt that it was worthwhile to first create a comprehensive structure, a new programme within the campus, and only after that move over to more specific research topics. The idea was also to restructure the documentation and archiving of activities at the college as well as to organise publishing and distribution in a way that would communicate with the outside world. In addition, the platform covers everything from workshops to online publishing and facilitating collaboration between different departments. It is my reaction to the challenges of Sint Lucas.

How can an academic institution benefit from this kind of an independent platform?

Through Monitor MEMEX, the academia can reflect on topics outside the institution and vice versa. The platform is fundamentally more dynamic than rigid institutions, slowed down by their complex structures and large scale. Thus, it offers the institution a just-in-time approach. The aim is to open up the institution by inviting people from different fields – most of them outside the design context – to contribute and, through that, recreate the study programme. Documenting and publishing these contributions, the platform compliments the institution not only as a provider of “real-life” content but also as a distribution channel.

“Monitor MEMEX offers Sint Lucas College of Art a just-in-time approach.”

The Monitor MEMEX logo by Boy Vereecken.

In addition, Monitor MEMEX functions as an important intersection and common ground for collaborations between different disciplines, because it is open for students from all departments: printing, fine art, jewellery design, graphic design, advertising, etc. Often these kinds of collaborations take place through established roles – the roles set by respective departments. However, working in a shared context and towards a shared aim leads to the abolition of titles. As a result, the almost confrontational approaches as well as methodologies are forgotten, and genuine collaboration can take place.

Can you tell me a little bit more about how Monitor MEMEX works in practice?

Since the platform was founded only a few months ago, it is still taking its shape and the programme will appear more structured in the next academic year. To begin with, lectures and screenings are organised around certain topics, and interesting responses to these will be documented in publications.

What kind of research topics are, in your opinion, relevant in the context of design at present? Which ones did you choose to tackle within the programme?

First of all, it is central to consider different ways of establishing one’s own practice – which methods to use, and how to resolve certain things in the process. Building up one’s own body of work, oeuvre, contributes to personal evolvement and the other way around. Thinking about one’s work as a long-term process is natural for artists and researchers, but unfortunately rare in the field of design.

“Thinking about one’s work as a long-term process is natural for artists and researchers, but unfortunately rare in the field of design.”

The first Monitor MEMEX research topic was ‘What Does Research Mean in Design Practice?’. This was discussed with two designers, Daniel van der Velden and David Bennewith, who both presented their approach to design and research. One of the current topics is ‘New and Its Meaning at Present’; how to be progressive today. Another topic is ‘Scenario Making’, which takes a look at the relationship between film and graphic design. ‘As Found’ encourages students to use research and questioning as methods in their work.

Can you think of similar initiatives that would have inspired or functioned as models for Monitor MEMEX?

At present, there are some similar platforms, but their approach and motives are very different. Maybe the most interesting example of all times is Black Mountain College that operated in North Carolina from 1933 to 1957 (often these types of initiatives seem to work because of their temporary nature). Quite a few prominent figures, such as Josef Albers, came to teach at the college after Bauhaus closed down due to Nazi pressure. Therefore, Black Mountain continued the Bauhaus legacy in many ways. The interaction between the academia and the professional field – one of the best educational tools in my opinion, and something that I apply at Monitor MEMEX – was central also at Black Mountain.

“The interaction between the academia and the professional field is one of the best educational tools in my opinion.”

Vormat, the first Monitor MEMEX publication.

How would you describe your personal research methods?

I have been very interested in figuring out the meaning of oeuvre in relation to my own design practice: How can a designer build on oeuvre? How can one’s practice reflect on itself in order to create something timeless? I hope that whenever something that I have created leaves the studio – and to whatever context it arrives – it will speak to things beside it as well as those before and after it. A guiding line, or a method in my work, is to picture how the result will look like in ten years time and in different contexts. This keeps me motivated.

What kinds of methods do you use in your teaching?

The methods are very much influenced by the fact that instead of giving classes or assignments, I have appointments with the Master students in the course of their final projects. The meetings are based on guiding and reflection.

Can you give me an example of a workshop that you have given as well as explain the ways in which research was part of it?

I usually introduce the students to design research through my own research-based projects. An example of this was a workshop that I gave in Venice with Kasia Korczak. It dealt with information graphics, which is an area of design that I am not particularly close to. However, by chance, we were working on a book consisting of quite a few graphs. So, we showed the book in progress to the students and asked them to make questions about the graphics and work with them, too. The aim was to find solutions to problems that we had while working on the book. In the end, the workshop involved many discussions, and even though the results didn’t exactly fit for the book in question (as I had wished for) they were much more interesting than I had expected. This experience also reminded me of how discussion certainly plays an important role in workshops.

This brings to my mind the phrase “doing research by design”, which points out research being part of the design process.

I definitely consider that an applicable approach. In the context of design, the tendency is to conceive research and execution as separate entities. Students tend to be done with the research part when moving on to working with visual means. The main aim of the platform is to encourage students to integrate research more profoundly into their practice.

“The aim of the platform is to encourage students to integrate research more profoundly into their practice.”

On the other hand, like you mentioned in the context of the info graphic workshop, design is traditionally defined as problem solving. Does your approach relate to this kind of design thinking in general, or is it something parallel to it?

This kind of an approach is necessary from the client’s point of view. On the contrary, I am interested in questioning the content through the creation of a subtle conflict. Adding to the “necessary” problem solving, I like to use my designs to open up the imagination. However, there are certainly many design practices based on problem solving, and I do acknowledge as well as introduce them while teaching.

What kinds of projects are you currently working on at Monitor MEMEX?

Just recently, we finished a Master class on typography given by Karl Nawrot, an illustrator and type designer. He has a strong oeuvre, and therefore I felt that it was worthwhile to introduce him to the students. Nawrot is very aware of how he positions himself in the field. He manages to incorporate his rather artistic practice into commissioned design projects so that both ends, the client and the designer, are content. Usually his projects result in vivid typefaces that enhance the character of the commissions and, at the same time, are fulfilling for him to work with. Nawrot’s secret lies in limitations that he sets for himself in the form of very particular models and tools applied throughout his design process. And that is exactly what, for me, is even more valuable than the end results – the way he carries out research through his practice.

We started OK Do a little over a year ago to have a home for independent thinking and doing. Designers by background, we wanted to use our skills and methods in work that avoids traditional categories and disciplinary boundaries. The idea of stepping beyond the realm of design – to the borderlands of art and science – was the starting point of the Science Poems project, too. Natural science felt particularly fascinating for us as it deals with things physically present in our everyday lives yet often beyond our abilities to sense or conceptualise. Seeing design and art as good tools for asking questions and visualising the invisible, we set out to explore the field of natural science in a very subjective way, trying to understand it as well as find cross-disciplinary ways to talk about it.

A book and exhibition on the topic were launched in June 2010 at 0fr galerie in Paris, where we invited six designer and artist friends to present their ‘science poems’. Ranging from fashion exploring electromagnetic space to a musical composition derived from DNA base pairs, each exhibition piece dealt with a particular field of natural science: astronomy, biology, chemistry, earth sciences, physics or cross-disciplines. The book features presentations of the works in the exhibition, discussions with some of our favourite science poets, articles about subjects such as parallel universes or spiritual science as well as various other experimental science writings and images. Edited by us, it is designed by Åh, the London-based studio we have worked in close collaboration with since the beginning of our existence. Other contributors include friends with wild ideas about science.

Science Poems London presentation at Donlon Books / X Marks the Bökship.

After Paris, the Science Poems book travelled around the world together with small-scale displays. Coming from Napa Books in Helsinki and do you read me?! in Berlin, its last presentation was held in London at Donlon Books / X Marks the Bökship with a reading of ‘From Big Bang Machine (with love)’ science fiction short story by author Maria Candia. The story by the Helsinki-based novelist (also known as Megatron Braineater) presented the genesis of a man-made universe written for the book, while we served the guests a mixture of ammonium chloride, ethanol and water wearing chemist coats specially created for the drink lab by fashion designer K.I. Kinnunen. Made out of space blankets, the costumes reflected Kinnunen’s Science Poems exhibition piece, Faraday Suit, bridging techno-romanticism and retreat and exploring clothes as not only physical but also philosophical interfaces between the internal and external worlds.

Space blanket chemist coats by K.I. Kinnunen.

“Science Poems is a project that will never end.”

Science Poems is a project that will never end. Having taken part in the topical discourse around merging disciplines through artistic excursions to the field of natural science, playing with human perceptions of reality, in the future we would like to join our forces with scientists in practice. We will continue the discussion about science with a mathematician and a Waldorf psychologist at the Applied Freedom symposium and exhibition by the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design on 26 January, 2011. More information to follow.

Science Poems London presentation at Donlon Books / X Marks the Bökship.

"Knowledge can improve one’s intuition. The goal is to not let either overpower."

Preparing for the ten-minute reading, the gallery visitors were asked to pick up a personally topical tweet from the printed archives of Maeda’s Twitter philosophy. Each tweet could only be picked once. I went for:

Twitter
Mon Jan 11 11:26:22 +0000 2010
Edu Knowledge can improve one’s intuition. The goal is to not let either overpower.

Subscribers to the reading were also encouraged to think of a question for the oracle. Considering Maeda’s reseach into the necessary role that artists and designers play in the 21st century creative economy, mine had to do with career advice.

Visiting Maeda in his (physical) sandbox upstairs of the gallery was an interesting experience. Somewhere between McKinsey Consulting on tour, self-help and Twitter of the real world, the event felt relevant and meaningful. Drawing in the sand of his box, Maeda talked about art and science, the loneliness of working on Skype, and the future of OK Do (based on a brief introduction). OK Do’s fortune cookie:

Live
Thu Nov 18 18:50 +0000 2010
”It’s good to write because people can read.”

Hello Ingo.

It all started in 2006 with Solutions 1-10: Umbauland (“Remodel Nation”), ten provokingly simple ideas which would see Germany work it out after all, including a new grammar, a new political party, and the Great Pyramid, the biggest building in the world which would serve as a democratic tomb for millions of people. At the moment, there are already five Solution books, and more to come.

How would you describe the series and its overall premise? Why the nation?

Because the nation is so weak. Basically, in the Solution series authors are asked to develop an abundance of compact and original ideas for countries and regions, contradicting the widely held assumption that, after the end of socialism, human advancement is only possible through technology or requires a yet-to-be-established world order.

“The Solution series contradicts the widely held assumption that human advancement is only possible through technology or requires a yet-to-be-established world order.”

Is authorship relevant to you in regards to the visions of Umbauland and Dubai Democracy?

I’m happy with just having the ideas, but they should have the potential to work. The books are like seeds. It’s more up to others to put them into the soil. And just as actual seeds, they can remain seeds for quite a while.

You’re not interested in personally pursuing their realisation through, for instance, political means?

I had the idea to take one of the ten visions in Umbauland, the first Solution book on Germany, and try to promote it myself. I chose The Great Pyramid – the idea of a mass tomb for potentially everyone – and did the project mainly in collaboration with an entrepreneur, Jens Thiel. We organised an architectural competition, produced a business plan, collaborated with an engineer who thought about how it could be realised, founded an association to support it, and got everything documented on film. We got immense media attention and caused a big debate in Germany, but it was difficult to take the next step. However, the project still exists.

In general, the more real the visions become the better. But my capacities are limited. I want to continue writing. How it usually works when proposing a vision for a country is that you become the face of the vision, having one key vision and sticking to it – promoting it for years and years. But this is boring for me.

Solution 186–195: Dubai Democracy by Ingo Niermann.

‘Strategic design’ and ‘design thinking’ have become buzzwords not only in business and industry but also on a governmental level. How would you place the Solution series on this map, and where do you think strategic design (or the Solution series) ends and politics begin?

‘Solution’ is a very common term in economics and there’s no problem with strategic design. But why not do these things completely independently? When you’re not necessarily dependent on the realisation of your ideas, it’s possible to choose a completely different rhetoric, a completely different language. Momus, for instance, wrote short stories on Scotland [see Jenna's interview with Momus]. And his forthcoming Japan book will be like a novel. Tirdad Zolghadr’s book about America is largely an autobiography.

Who are the authors of the books in addition to the ones on Germany and Dubai, which you wrote yourself?

They’re either friends or people who actually approached me. Momus got involved in The Great Pyramid project by performing at The Great Pyramid gala. He asked me if he could contribute, and I immediately said yes. I mean, I wouldn’t have dared to ask him myself.

What would you say is the role and meaning of being inside and looking out vs. outside and looking in in terms of writing about your own home country or other nations like China or Dubai in your case? Or maybe Scotland and Japan in Momus’ case.

Actually it doesn’t feel that much different – doing a book on Germany or one on Dubai. We had these discussions with one of the contributors, Tirdad Zolghadr, because a friend of mine wanted to do a book on Afghanistan and we wondered whether it would be neo-colonial if she as a German did that. But I think there should be no restrictions. Everything works. I mean, Momus did a book on Scotland. He is from Scotland, but almost never lived there. Still, there is a connection. Tirdad was also born in the US, but didn’t live there so long, except now when he returned to teach there. His approach was more about looking at the biggest, the still most powerful country in the world.

Ingo Niermann at home in Wedding, Berlin.

Going back to the question of genre. Is the boundary between fiction and non-fiction interesting or relevant to you?

I’m a novelist, although most of the books that I publish are non-fiction. But the possibilities of making things up or not making things up interest me. When you talk about the future, you don’t know where the boundary is. That’s a nice thing. Usually novelists write about things in the past. Or they write science fiction. However, my idea as a novelist creating the Solution series is that when you talk about the future it’s fiction per se.

“When you talk about the future, you don’t know where the boundary between fiction and non-fiction is.”

And how has your work with the Solution series been received? Has it been perceived as “real”?

There has been a lot of questioning in relation to my work. For instance, we went to a village which we had chosen as a possible place to build The Great Pyramid. Some people thought it was “Borat”. We were also given some funding for the project by the German Cultural Foundation, but they wanted us to ensure that we didn’t actually want the pyramid to become real. They liked the idea of keeping the piece in the framework of fiction and culture as they are not allowed to support real-estate ventures.

Which nations are next on the list?

There will be a book on Japan, The Book of Japans by Momus. Starting again from Scotland, on Shetland Islands, there’s a group of people who claim that they travelled to the future of Japan. They are twelve people, and they are called The Idiots. Now experts have to judge whether their prophecies on the future of Japan are realistic.

Then there’s another one, The United States of Palestine-Israel. It’s an anthology with 19 solutions written by many contributors and edited by Joshua Simon. It’s really interesting because the term ‘solution’ is very familiar in the context of Palestine and Israel. People always talk about the two-state solution, but it’s actually a guarantor of stagnation. And the book is all about opening up that discourse. It’s about questioning that solution and offering an abundance of new ones from creating a multitude of states to that one and only, coming up with a common myth for both Israelis and Palestinians. Some solutions evolve out of art projects and some from the perspective of politicians.

What else are you working at the moment?

At the moment, I’m working on a long essay titled Drill, which will include elements of fiction. It’s as much about my personal poetology, a way of understanding what I did so far and what keeps it together, as it is about the fundamental practice of contemporary people in general. It’s something that already happens, but I’m projecting it into the future. The Solution series is part of it, you’re part of it. I try not to do any less than understand the post post modern state – something that people do, but they just don’t know it yet. There’s all this opening up and crossing boundaries when you think of the last decades. And Drill could be the next step. It’s about limitations that you give yourself. It’s the freedom to restrict yourself. Radical performance art from the 70s has been of great inspiration to me when thinking about the Drill. In reverse, my concept of a Drill Palace inspired the performance artist Marina Abramović to “drill” her live audience.

Better Dreams, edited by Martti Kalliala and co-written with Jenna Sutela and Tuomas Toivonen will be published by Sternberg Press in 2011.

Home-work-home

Jenna: Our creative practice is as mobile as it can get. Having homes around the world, we sleep and work at each other’s places and on the way. When we get together, we usually work intensively, turning our homes into camps, talking, writing and putting on events. And we always cook. Living and working like this, it’s easy to relate to Merce Cunningham when he talked about his friend and collaborator Robert Rauschenberg: “When I met Bob, I felt less and less need for conversation. I felt what he felt.”

Anni: OK Do and life also mix in the sense that we collaborate mostly with friends – or that most of the collaborators eventually become our friends. And then we cook for them, too. Perhaps we unconsciously try to persuade people to work with OK Do through good food… Harriet Beecher Stowe said that “home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserve”. I think working on OK Do makes us happy because it allows us to be who we are and team up with people we admire and like.

“For the OK Talk brunches, we asked the guests to bring over a breakfast ingredient each so that we can cook together with them in the morning and sleep more during the night.”

Jenna: We usually take on slightly unrealistic cooking projects for our events, too – such as baking cakes in the middle of the night, in between a hundred other things. Learning from that, for the OK Talk brunch events in Helsinki and London, we asked the guests to bring over a breakfast ingredient each so that we can cook together with them in the morning and sleep more during the night.

Crossing disciplines

Anni: We’ve talked a lot about the concept of OK Do with each other and with others, in order to develop it further. And although we’re designers by background, we don’t want to get stuck in that world, or at least in the traditional ideas of design. The most important thing is to explore how we can contribute to creating better futures while thinking and doing things that fascinate us. We like art, science and music, engaging in dialogues as well as expressing ourselves.

Jenna: Having published our first book, Science Poems, in Paris in the summer, we recently also learned about the practicalities of independent publishing by running around the city, then Eurostar, and later the London underground with boxes of books. Not just writing, curating and cooking for the book party, we also took the role of a distributor in the project.

“One day we struggled with a text that looked at the poetics of quantum physics and the next we wondered how to get down the stairs in the metro with ninety books and a second-rate trolley.”

Anni: One day we struggled with a text that looked at the poetics of quantum physics and the next we wondered how to get down the stairs in the metro with ninety books and a second-rate trolley. We’re planning to issue a list of things that a small publisher needs to take into account when making a book. It was fun.

Jenna: And we met many interesting people – as well as some gentlemen who helped us to carry the boxes in the Paris metro.

Made in places

Anni: We’re interested in placemaking as well as how places shape us and OK Do. Travelling and seeing different things finally helps us see familiar things, like Finland, in a different way. While setting up an office in one place one day sounds attractive, it seems that, for now, we just need to keep moving.

“Travelling and seeing different things finally helps us see familiar things, like Finland, in a different way.”

Jenna: Sometimes, especially when travelling, it’s hard to distinguish between work and holiday. After Science Poems was published, I travelled on the Italian coast only to cook and swim for a week, and Anni took to Lapland. Living on an island with no internet, again, it was easy to turn food making into a project. This made me think about how not only cooking, but various kinds of mundane activities like changing or decorating one’s environment, or leaving it as it is, affect not only living but working, too. While in Italy, I read a story in 032c about the American artist Cy Twombly who made no distinction between interior decoration and art, but decorated with his paintings, just as he did with antiques. To him, a doorknob would present itself something as admirable as a painting – just as the contexts of Helsinki, Paris and London, an Italian summer house or camping in Lapland, play a significant role in whatever we do.

Anni: It was weird to have a phone discussion with Jenna about the name of the publication on young Finnish and Chinese architecture that was in process at the time, just after I had woken up from a night slept on the driver’s seat of the car. It had been too cold and windy to put up the tent in Nordkapp, the most Northern point of the continental Europe you can reach along a road. Deciding on the name, that ended up being Double Happy – (8+8=19) Views on Architecture in Finland and China, required a certain type of thinking for which I felt too far out in the periphery. I guess I had travelled there exactly for that.

“We collect bits and pieces from our environment and tie them together into an assemblage that is us.”

Jenna: Another thing I learned about Twombly was that living and working in Italy for a long time, he used white paint, his “marble”, to coat the sculptures or assemblages he made, as if to neutralise the heterogeneous effects of the diverse shapes and colours of objects they contained – making them Twombly. And I guess this is what we do, too, in our own way. Collect bits and pieces from our environment and tie them together into an entity that is us.

Anni: And then we take that entity into different places again. It will never be finished.

Originally published as part of Hirameki catalogue for a showcase of Finnish design in Japan, this article is also the third in a series of introspection on our activities as OK Do. For previous ideas, see Introspection is Boring – But what is OK Do? and How to Make a Design Think Tank.

To be honest with you, we aren’t experts in architecture, but really into it. Having been invited to collaborate with Newly Drawn, a group of young Finnish architects, we were taken by the opportunity to explore the topic from an outsider’s perspective, to interview interesting people in the field and dig deeper into our own surroundings as well as placemaking in China.

We started first by producing communications for Snowball architecture events organised as part of Finland’s cultural programme for the Shanghai World Expo, and ended up as editors of the Double Happy publication. Already in the beginning we came across the outlandish duplet: Finnish and Chinese architecture. “What could Finnish and Chinese architects learn from each other?”, we asked ourselves in the midst of trying to encourage Sino-Finnish architectural exchange.

Going to Shanghai in March 2010, we met with both Finnish and Chinese architects who told us about their projects and interests, providing answers to our questions. The discussions revolved around social and ecological issues and innovations, cultural differences and similarities, the potential for collaboration and increasingly crossing disciplines. The contrast between Finland, a small Nordic welfare state still dominated by a modernist stance on architecture, and China, a country undergoing rapid modernisation and thus pushing the boundaries of architectural design, proved to be big. While practitioners in Finland seem to long for a new air of dynamism and change similar to that of the post-war era, Chinese architects returning from their studies abroad are tackling the preservation and development of cultural identity in urbanising China.

For us, it felt natural to approach the topic of Finnish and Chinese architecture by investigating design processes rather than the end results. We set out to pinpoint areas that we found particularly important when it comes to improving life through architecture in Finland and China. Building inspiring and enjoyable cities with many layers and cultural variation as well as creating comfortable homes, work places and public spaces – and routes between them – are, in the end, objectives of architects in both countries. But while Finns know how to support privacy, the Chinese master communality. And while Chinese architects know how to tackle chaos and speed, their Finnish colleagues are experts in taking advantage of tranquility and empty space. These skills can be applied in both countries, even if the starting points and issues are completely different.

Double Happy includes stories that reflect some of the various facets of placemaking. Commissioned by Newly Drawn and head-edited by us, with writings and illustrations from a group of people invited to explore the topic, it draws a picture of Finnish and Chinese architectural environment today. Graphic design and art direction by Åh.

Contributors: Mathieu Borysevicz, Bryan Boyer, Christopher DeWolf, Che Fei 车飞, Pan Jian Feng 潘剑锋, Hanne Granberg, Hella Hernberg, Kaarle Hurtig, Martti Kalliala, Hertta Kiiski, Dylan Kwok, Katja Lindroos, Meri Louekari, Herman Mao, Song Min 宋敏, Bert de Muynck, Rami Niemi, Hans Park, Janne Teräsvirta, Tuomas Toivonen, Timo Tuomas, Valtteri Väkevä & Hu Yang 胡杨

囍 (‘double happy’) is a popular decorative design composed of two stylized characters 喜 (‘joy’ or ‘happiness’). There is a visual resemblance between 囍 and the two lucky digits ‘88’. In Chinese the word for number ‘eight’ (八) sounds similar to the word which means ‘prosper’ or ‘wealth’ (发).

Inflatables (1971) by Ant Farm in Volume magazine #24, 2010.

“It’s what I do that teaches me what I’m looking for.” – Pierre Soulages, 1953

1. Cultural introspection

Founded in San Francisco in 1968, Ant Farm was an architecture, graphic arts, and environmental design practice ahead of their time. The group described themselves “an art agency that promotes ideas that have no commercial potential, but which we think are important vehicles of cultural introspection”. Interested in movement and impermanence, Ant Farm were self-nominated commentators rather than actual practitioners of architecture. They mainly operated through the display of experimental artefacts. Yesterday, I witnessed a similar approach in 79.89.09 performance by Slavs and Tatars, “a faction of polemics and intimacies” with a narrative strategy to read the recent past, focusing on Eurasian culture.

2. Multisensorial arrangements

Indy Johar of strategy and design practice 00:/ presented an interesting take on spatial arrangements during his recent lecture at The Architecture Foundation in London. Talking about how architects should relearn their skills, he shared an example of a project where they used the programming of school bells to solve an issue of congestion in corridors as an alternative to redesigning the school interior. [Apropos, I just learned that some people work as “hushers” outside Japan clubs, making sure the sounds of performances or people entering and leaving the venues won’t cause disturbance on the streets.] Note to self: think the unthinkable, think multisensorial.

“There is no safety beyond being relevant now.” – Wolfgang Tillmans, 2010

Wolfgang Tillmans at Serpentine Gallery, 26 June - 19 September 2010. Photo courtesy of Gautier de Blonde.

3. Relevant now

Last week, photographer Wolfgang Tillmans talked about the time-bound art of turning a piece of paper into a highly charged and complex cultural object at Frieze Art Fair. With work varying from elaborate documentation of life around him to abstract chemical and material experiments – or from nightlife to still life – Tillmans’ motto is that no safety lies beyond being relevant now. For him, that is currently the observation of mundane, unfamiliar things such as motherhood and sports.

The series of events consists of four brunch discussions, one in Helsinki and three in London, dealing with a total of three topics – Making Places, Strategies of Participation and Borderlands – exploring social, cultural and ethical viewpoints around different applications of design. Twenty designers and artists have been invited to attend the OK Talk sessions, each consisting of a panel discussion informed by a brief presentation of list-making and cross-question tasks given to the participants before the event and featured in a tabloid publication.
–

Registration

R.S.V.P. at hello@ok-do.eu

–

Programme

OK Talk Helsinki

Making Places

Saturday 4 September at ONNI home shop, Kulmakatu 5 A 4, Helsinki
Breakfast and discussion 11:30-13:30

Bryan Boyer, Architect and Design Lead / Sitra, www.helsinkidesignlab.org
Hanna Harris, Urban Researcher and Programme Director, Arts & Culture / The Finnish Institute in London, www.finnish-institute.org.uk
Amanda Levete, Architect / Amanda Levete Architects, www.amandalevetearchitects.com
Markus Miessen, Architect / Studio Miessen, www.studiomiessen.com – CANCELLED DUE TO ILLNESS – replaced by Shohei Shigematsu, Architect / OMA NY, http://oma.eu!
Nene Tsuboi, Artist and Designer / NOW for Architecture and Urbanism, www.nenetsuboi.com

Ticket: a breakfast ingredient specified in an e-mail following registration

Download the OK Talk Helsinki tabloid

–

OK Talk London

Making Places

Saturday 18 September at HEL YES!, Wenlock Road 1-3, London
Breakfast and discussion 11:30-13:30

Åbäke, Design Practice, http://a.b.a.k.e.free.fr with Nene Tsuboi, Artist and Designer, www.nenetsuboi.com
Sarah Ichioka, Director / Architecture Foundation, www.architecturefoundation.org.uk
Teemu Suviala, Designer / Kokoro & Moi, www.kokoromoi.com
Tuomas Toivonen, Architect and Musician / NOW for Architecture and Urbanism, www.nowoffice.org
Finn Williams, Architect / Common Office,  www.commonoffice.co.uk

Free entry. HEL YES! restaurant open for breakfast orders.

The registration for the event ends on Thursday 16 Sept at 12am.

–

Strategies of Participation

Thursday 23 September at HEL YES!, Wenlock Road 1-3, London
Breakfast and discussion 8:30-10:30

Celine Condorelli, Architect and Artist / Support Structure, www.celinecondorelli.eu
Ulla-Maaria Engeström, Design Researcher / Thinglink, http://ullamaaria.typepad.com
HyperMarketo, Design Practice, http://hypermarketo.com
Karen Mirza, Artist and Researcher / Mirza/Butler, http://mirza-butler.net
Suvi Saloniemi, Curator / Kunsthalle Helsinki, www.taidehalli.fi

With special breakfast by Antto Melasniemi, Restaurateur and Hospitality Entrepreneur, www.kuurna.fi.

Ticket: any breakfast ingredients worth around £8

The registration for the event ends on Tuesday 21 Sept at 12am.

–

Borderlands

Saturday 25 September at HEL YES!, Wenlock Road 1-3, London
Breakfast and discussion 11:30-13:30

Revital Cohen, Designer, www.revitalcohen.com
Martti Kalliala, Architect and Musician / Renaissance Man, www.marttikalliala.com
Zak Kyes, Graphic Designer / Z.A.K. Studio, www.zak.to
Max Lamb, Designer, www.maxlamb.org
Aamu Song, Designer / Company, www.com-pa-ny.com

Free entry. HEL YES! restaurant open for breakfast orders.

The registration for the event ends on Thursday 23 Sept at 12am.

Download the OK Talk London tabloid

OK Talk Helsinki tabloids. Photo courtesy of Paavo Lehtonen.

Topics

Making Places

Making Places takes a fresh view on spatial practice. It studies both existing and imaginary places, looking at their creation, evolution and essence. The speakers for the two Making Places talks, one in Helsinki and another one in London, range from architects that build, design systems or make music to researchers and designers who create places through cultural activities or visual identities. Using Helsinki and London as starting points, we will encourage the discussion to revolve freely around placemaking in relation to day and night, the natural and the human-made, infrastructure and spirit of spaces, cities and citizens, or planning and spontaneity.

Strategies of Participation

Strategies of Participation explores the design of encounters, interactions and collaborations. Having used tools and methods such as intuition, friends, different media, travelling, coffee and the paper that you are holding in making OK Talk, we are keen on learning new ways to design participation. The panelists include creative professionals in the fields of interaction design and cultural production specialised in events, online platforms or exhibitions. They are invited to share their skills and insights on creating constructive collisions between people.

Borderlands

Borderlands explores the crossing of boundaries between design, art and other fields with an emphasis on collaborative practices. The idea of this talk is to look at the role of the designer in the increasingly interconnected world where we see the ambiguity of professional identity, often connected with varied locations, people and modes of practice, as an asset. What can working in between disciplines offer for creative professionals and the world at large? How are design processes changing? The speakers will tackle these questions through their backgrounds that vary from architecture and music to critical and experimental design, publishing and curating.

–

Curated by us, the OK Talk events are produced in collaboration with the Finnish Institute in London, Helsinki Design Week and the British Council’s Creative Cities project. They are funded by the Ministry of Education in Finland. Art direction by Åh.

The MUJI paper chair. Photo courtesy of MUJI.

For the paper chair exhibition, we (and 49 other designers) were sent a chair and asked to make something special out of it by painting or modifying it in other ways. In the end, the custom chairs would be exhibited and finally donated to local kindergartens. We made ‘Rinne / 輪廻’ which is a study on the life of a paper chair that can be used as nutrition for growing plants after its original function as a piece of furniture to sit on. Our piece will be given to children in the form of a flower.

Rinne / 輪廻

Paper chairs have a life. When they’ve done their job, they can reincarnate as nutritious ash for plants. We made kindlings, and finally a small bonfire out of the paper chair. It kept us warm on a cold night in Berlin. Next, you can give the chair a new life by planting flower seeds to a mix of earth and the ash from the fire – rich in calcium and potassium, and thus vital to healthy and strong plant growth.

Photos by Jenna.

Thank you Elisabeth, Martti, Norman and Tesalia!