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Working somewhere in between art and science, you aim to generate discussion about the relationship between technology and people. How would you define the role and purpose of design? And how do you define critical design?
AD: The question of art and design is problematic. A lot of people want to see us as artists, but we definitely see ourselves as designers trying to push the discipline forward, asking questions about design and through it. In fact, we launched the term critical design ten years ago in order to describe our work. Sometimes people think it simply means criticism; that we are negative about everything, anti-consumerist and against design. Some people relate it to critical theory; to Frankfurt school and anti-capitalist thinking. We are definitely aware of it, but then again not in that category either. Critical design is about critical thinking – about not taking things at face value. It's about questioning things, and trying to understand what's behind them. In essence, our objective is to use design as a means for applying skepticism to society at large.
[caption id="attachment_1403" align="alignnone" width="549" caption="a/b – "a sort of a manifesto that positions what we do in relation to how most people understand design" – by Dunne&Raby. Typography: OK DO."]
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You have compared design to art, using film and literature as examples of genres that are critical yet create pleasure. What do you think design and art can learn from each other?
AD: I think that art shouldn't need to exist. In an ideal, utopian world, everyday life would be so rich, meaningful and challenging that we wouldn't need this separate category called art. I kind of feel that art exists because design has failed. Learning from artists, designers should become bolder, more imaginative and critical. I'm not sure if art needs to learn from design, though.
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In Design Noir (2001), you wrote that "beneath the glossy surface of official design lurks a dark and strange world driven by real human needs". Do you feel that contemporary products do not match people's needs – and has this improved since you wrote Design Noir? Do you think that people are reacting to that themselves and how should they be involved in design processes?
AD: I think the internet has expanded the range of possibilities for pleasure and for fulfilling one's personal desires and fantasies, no matter how strange you are. But this still doesn't apply to products, which remain essentially functional. However, the background or the infrastructure of products has definitely transformed. Before, if you were obsessed about something unusual – like I was about strange radio cultures – it was hard to find any information about it.
AD & FR: Involving people in design processes relates to the do-it-yourself culture which we are not so interested in. Everyone can start making and modifying things themselves, but we believe it's important to have experts who can do special and beautiful things that are beyond the abilities of non-professionals.
AD: I get annoyed when people think that the DIY culture has made professionals useless. However, there are a lot of independent – yet professional – designers out there who offer radical products they create on their own.
FR: They are like activists; bottom-up designers. We like the story of activism, that there is room for free inventors. A good example is designer 
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The book also contains many musical and sonic references – sentences like “They were busy looking at each other with clicking metal eyes.” or stories about a band called Sonic Flower Groove after an album by the Scottish group Primal Scream. Would you say that you experience places through their sonic environment?
Being a musician I obviously have to pay a lot of attention to that. One reason behind the Sonic Flower Groove episode is that the first time I discovered Berlin was when I came here on tour with Primal Scream in 1987. So I was thinking what if it was reversed, that I was actually coming from Berlin and experiencing Scotland in the same way. And I guess that happened with many places, I discovered them as a musician. Music was a way to get my travel expenses paid.
How would you describe Berlin, your current home city by these attributes?
Berlin is a very quiet town. It has made me lose interest in pop music. The main sound on the streets is the birds singing. Germans like to see their cities as extensions of the forest and there are trees everywhere. And that’s very different from e.g. London where there is a lot of pollution and most of the sounds come from traffic or small speakers in every corner in every sandwich bar… And time is money. In that sense, Berlin is much less capitalist, much less toxic. And you can hear it. It’s a very avant-garde, experimental city. Even when you go to concerts you often end up listening to field recordings or the sound of a contact microphone being scraped up and down, sounds of ping pong balls or balloons. All this could be seen as utterly pretentious in many other cities but here you don’t have to have an aim or a commercial purpose in what you do. One can escape all sorts of obligations and necessities. That’s probably one reason why I have stayed here for so long.
Scotland number one hundred and three reads: “A computer makes a Scotland seem almost unnecessary.” Could this thought be applied to all distant places with internet access – like Finland, my home country, which you even refer to in the book (Scotland 136) – or is it rather a comment on a lack of identity?
Well, I think we’re seeing a crisis in national identity. I was quoted in a magazine saying that my true motherland is the internet. I feel like wherever I travel I’m always in this country called the internet. Or maybe it’s the operating system that counts – and I do almost feel a certain patriotism towards Apple computers. However, there’s another part of my identity that’s very Scottish. Whatever that is.
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You have lived in major cities around the world. What makes you move, and what made you leave Scotland in the first place?
It’s just a pattern I established very early because of moving with my father’s work when I was a child. After studying in Scotland I left for London to make it in music – a thing that all the Scottish musicians do. London felt like a bigger version of Scotland where more things were possible. Since then, my whole life has been motivated by appetite for certain things in certain cities. I’ve been lucky not having to work and being free to go wherever, even if it has made me very poor sometimes. Tokyo is my favourite city in the whole world. If my books are successful, that’s exactly where I’m going to go next.
How does the change of living environment affect your work?
When I was in Japan I felt quite isolated because I was a foreigner and I couldn’t speak too much Japanese. I found that my Scottish identity was becoming more important there. The album I made in Tokyo even has these rather strange Scottish songs on it. Berlin has brought up the need to experiment with sound because that’s just what people do here. I can spend my mornings at home writing something and the rest of the day is free for discovering something new. Then again London was a very commercial city so I tried to be successful and make lots of money. Living and working abroad makes you realize how only half of your personality is your own to control and the rest is really open to influence. I mean, we’re all chameleons in some way and the environment does change you. There’s a dialectical process going on between the environment and your personality.
Last week, we participated in a panel discussion on New Finnish Classics organised by the local Euro RSCG agency as part of their research project on the future of Finnish design brands. One of the central topics was how to make international brands with Finnish values. The event gathered Finnish designers and executives from big companies such as Marimekko to smaller practices like OK Do as well as academics from the University of Helsinki and the new Aalto University to present their views on the present and the future of Finnish design.
Marimekko lifestyle in Maritalo (Marihouse) by Aarno Ruusuvuori, 1966. Photo by the courtesy of the Museum of Finnish Architecture.
Thinking that Finland hasn’t really been the design country worth its reputation after the golden era of the 1950s and ’60s, we started by discussing what made Finnish design interesting back then. Having to make the most out of the little that Finland had after the Second World War, design was blended into production, and a forward-looking spirit of collaboration between different disciplines generated intrepid, even utopian, ideas.
Marikylä (‘Mari’ village in Finnish) was a village designed together by the founder of Marimekko Armi Ratia and architect Aarno Ruusuvuori in the 1960s to accommodate all Marimekko personnel, to work as a laboratory of product development and to establish new ways of living. Even though this project was never realised in its full scale (housing for 3500 inhabitants, offices and a factory), the concept of Maritalo (Marihouse) was introduced in 1966 and Marimekko proved to be a lifestyle brand like no other. When asked why the cosmopolitan Ratia decided to base Marimekko in Finland out of all places, she stated that she was “not amused by easiness”.
When asked why Armi Ratia decided to base Marimekko in Finland out of all places, she stated that she was “not amused by easiness”.
Tuulikki Pietilä (Too-Ticky), Tove Jansson and Signe Hammarsten-Jansson on the island of Klovharu, 1958. Photo by Alf Lidman.
Another classic Finnish brand springing from a lifestyle, The Moomins, was created when the Second World War was still on. Finland’s most widely read author abroad Tove Jansson wrote and illustrated her first Moomin book, The Moomins and the Great Flood, in 1945. Having been depressed by the war, Jansson said that she had wanted to write something naive and innocent. The story about the eccentric and oddly-shaped characters living close to nature was inspired by the author’s close family members and a distinctive array of friends. The Moomins were bohemian, very tolerant towards diversity as well as on the verge of melancholy. Jansson’s original style and topics drew on Finnish mythology and spread around the world in many books and comic strips. In the meanwhile, she also worked on art projects like the Moomin House – a 2,5-meter-high five-storey miniature of the Moomin home built together with Jansson’s life partner Tuulikki Pietilä (Too-Ticky) and Pentti Eistola according to architect Reima Pietilä’s floor plan.
After the golden era, the design industry has shifted from industrial art to industrial design and later to new areas such as service design which are often driven by technology and require new sensibilities and insight. However, as we brought up in the discussion, important as it is to develop new, future-oriented approaches to design, in order to create brands that people will love, the bold and personal attitude of the 50s and 60s’ designers in Finland should not be forgotten. In fact, drawing on their spirit could help us regain the qualities of a design country and, again, to make new classics out of today’s resources.
Tattijakkara (Mushroom Stool) is designed by Company and made by Pirtakka, a company specialised in wooden furniture. Photo by the courtesy of Company.
An interesting contemporary design brand that respects Finnish traditions and skills yet renews them open-mindedly is Company’s Salakauppa (Secret Shop). Created by Aamu Song and Johan Olin of Company, Salakauppa’s collection includes furniture and clothing made in co-operation with various small Finnish manufacturers. Tattijakkara (Mushroom Stool), for instance, updates the classic Finnish fly agaric stool to a new, non-poisonous, level. Song and Olin explain that the product range called Top Secrets of Finland was designed because of their interest in the secret luxuries of Finland – the objects people have in their summer cottages, the things they find functional, inspiring and of good quality yet so everyday that people forget to tell others about them. Recently, Company did a similar project in South Korea, Aamu’s home country.
Daniel Palillo working at his studio in Viiskulma, Helsinki. Photo by Paavo Lehtonen.
Another new brand that we feel has potential to turn design products into classics is fashion label Daniel Palillo. Carrying the name of its 29-year-old Finnish-Italian founder and designer, Daniel Palillo collections are renown for their juxtapositional and original approach to fashion design. In contrast to Company’s Top Secrets of Finland project, they carry little resemblance to traditional Finnish design language yet, and as we see it, show a great deal of attitude similar to that of the design minds of the golden era. Daniel Palillo dresses are worn by people ranging from grannies and teenage boys to American pop stars.
“One can never be entirely free, if one admires someone else too much.” – Snufkin in a Moomin story
Like the Top Secrets of Finland and Daniel Palillo’s collections, many of the most interesting design projects back in the 50s and 60s were not commissions but self-initiated collaborations. They originated primarily from artistic motives. In addition to suggesting a return to a more artistic design approach, we also brought up social innovation as a field Finns are famous for having known their way around before. Why not take inspiration from the maternity package for instance, a Finnish invention from the 1930s providing all new parents with necessities such as clothes, linen, nappies as well as a box to function as the first bed? Or why not productise the rarities of Finland such as the sensation of being cold or having to be aware of bears? It is important to consider what makes us different from others – especially in a curious, unusual way – and draw on that. We feel that many Finnish brands nowadays have a tendency to try and be international through looking at what other international brands do. However, as Snufkin, one of the Moomin characters said “one can never be entirely free, if one admires someone else too much”.