Sound garden

In Helsinki, courtyards are often reserved for household activities, like garbage disposal or carpet beating. Other than that, they are mostly used for passing through. There are sounds that big bins make when they open and close, and the clatter of steps when people walk home. But were the inner yards featuring more gardens, tables and chairs – places to meet and hang around in – there might be a hum of longer and shorter conversations, jingling of cutlery and plates, and the sounds that gardening creates.

Avian melodies

Some clichés are true: birds’ singing makes most people happy. And if Finnish people love nature, why not bring more of it to the city? If Helsinki would have more trees and small parks everywhere, there would also be more rustle of leaves, and birdsongs of different kinds.

Concrete music

How to make the most out of asphalt, the dominant flooring material of the city? We would like to hear more click-clacking of high-heeled shoes, tapping of the canes of older people taking the streets, rattle of skateboards and, naturally, the sound of bicycles skidding and braking.

World mix

With Finnish and Swedish as the official languages, Helsinki is already a bilingual city and other languages, like Russian, are heard more often everyday. Bringing more ingredients to the mix and creating a babel of languages along with their accents, dialects, volumes, rhythms and intonations, would make Helsinki sound more interesting.

Napa Gallery, Jani, Lotta and Martti.

Science Poems mini exhibition and Anni.

Books, Maija and Stella.

Paris photos and herbal drinks.

Jenna making drinks.

Benjamin and the party on the street.

Nene listening to DNA Junk by Martti Kalliala. On the left: Faraday Suit vest by K.I. Kinnunen. On the right: Higgs Boson by Anna Ahonen and Katariina Lamberg.

Kaira looking at Brain Forest by Nene Tsuboi.

Nene, a Science Poems artist and typographer for the Helsinki party.

Order Science Poems online through Napa webshop.

Astronomy
Anna Ahonen and Katariina Lamberg – Higgs Boson, 2010, Digital print

Anna Ahonen & Katariina Lamberg: Higgs Boson (2010), digital print, 80x120cm

Higgs boson is a hypothetical elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model in particle physics. Experimental detection of the Higgs boson would help to explain the origin of mass in the universe. It is currently searched using the particle accelerators of CERN but it has yet to be observed in the physical world. If the Higgs boson cannot be found to exist, the current cosmological and physical models must be radically reassessed – and our conception of reality will change.

“The idea is to give attention to a phenomenon we find fascinating, to convey its mysticism to others,” Anna Ahonen and Katariina Lamberg explain. “Natural sciences encompass many intriguing and beautiful things that usually remain within books and the dedicatees. We, however, didn’t want to make a scientific or theoretical representation of a scientific thing, but rather use the facts as a starting point for a work of imagination.”

Anna Ahonen (b. 1981) and Katariina Lamberg (b. 1977) form a multidisciplinary design studio Ahonen & Lamberg founded in Paris, 2006. They are also co-founders and art directors of the Dossier Journal.

Biology
Nene Tsuboi – Brain Drawings, 2010, Ink and pencil on paper

Nene Tsuboi: Synapse (2010), ink on paper, 40 x 30 cm

The altogether six brain drawings – Brain Forest, Miracle of Brain, Dopaminergic, Neuron, Synapse and Dopamine – explore the scientific aspect of human feelings, experiences and perceptions. They were inspired by the love stories of a Japanese writer Shungicu Uchida that Nene Tsuboi has been working with.

“I wasn’t so much into science at school, but when I read an essay written by a Japanese brain scientist Ken Mogi some years ago, I became a big fan of brains,” Nene Tsuboi says. “I like the way he crosses over the borders of art, science, philosophy and religion in his books, radio shows and blogs. What intrigues me the most about brains is that we don’t know that much about them yet,” Nene Tsuboi says. “Everybody has one but they still haven’t been totally understood by anybody.”

Nene Tsuboi (b. 1976) is a Japanese graphic designer and artist living in Helsinki since 1999. She started her work as an illustrator with ANTEEKSI design collective in 2001, and later founded NOW architecture and design office with architect Tuomas Toivonen.

Chemistry
Martti Kalliala – DNA Junk, 2010, Audio

Martti Kalliala: DNA Junk (2010), audio 33 min.

DNA Junk is a base pair sequence of non-genomic DNA translated into notes through MIDI and played by a Roland TB-303 bass synthesiser. DNA – the storage for genetic information in all living things – consists of adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine (A, T, G, and C) molecules. The sequences of these four bases, A, T, G, and C, determine how you differ from other living things. So, for instance, the raw data needed to construct a particular human being is a 3 billion character long sequence of these four letters. If this is translated into notes as such, it produces a near infinite monophonic melody with seemingly little variation.

“It’s been known since the early 1980s that the construction of DNA and musical composition bear similarities in their repetition processes,” Martti Kalliala explains. “However, I thought it would be interesting to bring the concept into my ‘home’ domain of techno/house/electronic dance music, and make something that’s actually meaningful in this context – not only conceptually but musically too.”

Martti Kalliala (b. 1980) is an independent architect and musician who is currently touring the world with his electronic music project Renaissance Man. Having worked amongst others with the Office for Metropolitan Architecture and NOW, he is also editing a publication on twelve pragmatic utopias for Finland.

Earth Sciences
Miska Knapek – Windtracing, 2009, Real time digital visualisation

Miska Knapek: Windtracing (2009), a real time visualisation on a computer screen

The animation draws the story of the wind’s movement, taking place in Helsinki over one year. It narrates the hidden life of the wind with a pencil-thin grey line moving in the same direction and with proportionally similar velocity as the current of air. The larger line on the screen shows a close-up revealing the wind’s more intimate movements.

“There’s a slight existentialist moment in the process of working with real-time data – even if you make rules for how the data is going to be shown, you never know what you’re going to get,” Miska Knapek says. “You could say that I got into meteorology through seeing what the wind data does: how temperamental the wind can be, how different seasons affect it, and so on. The stereotypical idea of the wind is that it either blows or it doesn’t, and that it’s this static, lifeless thing that goes in one direction at a time. But when I got the Windtracing running, I saw a movement that reminded me of a dancer. I had to sit down for an hour or so to only watch it go.”

Miska Knapek (b. 1975) is a Danish interaction designer and artist living and working in Helsinki. Growing up by the sea, wind has always been a part of his life. Miska’s spatio-temporal work opens new windows to the world.

Physics
K.I. Kinnunen – Faraday Suit, 2010, Clothing of copper silk plain weave, silk metal organza, boiled metal wool, carbon net, etc.

K.I. Kinnunen: Faraday Suit (2010), copper silk mix (vest) and ESD protective cotton with carbon fibre jersey mix (multi-purpose garment). Photo courtesy of Justus Järnefelt.

Faraday Suit is a series of clothing bridging technoromanticism and retreat. Exploring the invisible electromagnetic environment it resonates with everyday life through pieces functioning as interfaces between the built electrosphere and our internal world.

“The design for the series came about through exploring electromagnetism, electromagnetic spaces and wearables in those spaces,” K.I. Kinnunen describes. “I also looked into conducting materials like carbon and metal fibres as well as intact and layered surfaces. I like to call the end result a wearable tale, or functional fiction in the spirit of Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby’s thinking (see OK Do’s interview with Dunne & Raby). This is because Faraday Suit plays with the idea of functional fashion design by inventing new motives of use through creating, for example, natural spaces with association to insulation from the electromagnetic environment.”

K.I. Kinnunen (b. 1984) is a fashion designer based in Helsinki. Having graduated as Master of Arts from the School of Art and Design at the Aalto University early this summer, Kinnunen spent last spring working with Haider Ackermann in Antwerp. At the moment, she is designing mini-collections for her portfolio as well as made-by-order pieces for private clients.

Cross-disciplines
Kaarle Hurtig and Simo Vassinen – Welcome to Parasite, 2010, Photography and text

Kaarle Hurtig & Simo Vassinen: Welcome to Parasite (2010), photography and text

by sherabbi, Nov 20, 2009 12:00AM (5 member comments)
Actually, the symptoms have progressively worsened: diarrhea/IBS, sharp pains on my left side. Nausea, UTI/Bladder Infections – chronic; these do not respond well to antibiotics (I was in Emergency in Brasilia a few days later with IV antibiotics). Weight gain, insomnia, Acid Reflux, dizziness, Respiratory Problems/Infections, DX with asthma in 2003, then COPD in 2006. I have NEVER smoked.
–
[Our] modern Marco Polos now bring back the moral spices of which our society feels an increasing need as it is conscious of sinking further into boredom, but that this time they take the form of photographs, books, and travellers’ tales. (…) The perfumes of the tropics and the pristine freshness of human beings have been corrupted by a busyness with dubious implications, which mortifies our desires and dooms us to acquire only contaminated memories. (C. Lévi-Strauss: Tristes Tropiques)
–
Welcome to Parasite investigates parasitology through anthropology and a metaphor of a paradise lost. “People travel across the seas in search of themselves, for realness and for belonging,” Kaarle Hurtig and Simo Vassinen say. “Every now and then, a parasite follows us home. There’s a microscopic worm that eats our insides, reminding us of false dreams and vanity, and leaving an emptiness that’s hard to shake off. But we would still rather stay inquisitive than stop. Claude Lévi-Strauss talked about the “sadness of the tropics” and the disenchanting side of exploration. Thor Heyerdahl’s eagerness was naive at times, and Paul Gauguin’s Tahiti was romanticised and corrupt. Our work is about this battle of curiousity, amazement and melancholy.”

Science Poems artists: Anna Ahonen & Katariina Lamberg (portrait by Spela Kasal), Nene Tsuboi (portrait by Hertta Kiiski), Martti Kalliala (portrait by Paavo Lehtonen), K.I.Kinnunen, Miska Knapek and Simo Vassinen & Kaarle Hurtig (portraits by H. Kiiski).

The full length interviews with the artists are included in the Science Poems book along with various other poetic writings and images about science by OK Do and friends. The book, designed by Åh, is available online at Napa Bookshop as well as at the 0fr bookshop, La Librairie du Palais de Tokyo, Librairie Flammarion at the Centre Pompidou and Yvon Lambert in Paris; AA Bookshop, Koenig Books at the Serpentine Gallery, Artwords Bookshop Hackney and b store in London; Kiasma (Mannerheiminaukio 2) and Napa Gallery (Eerikinkatu 18) in Helsinki; do you read me?! (Auguststrasse 28), Pro qm (Almstadtstrasse 48-50) and Motto (Skalitzer Str. 68) in Berlin as well as NEW ACCIDENT (233-1 Jyouhoku) in Komatsu, Ishikawa.

Through a series of four ‘talks’ (one in Helsinki and three in London), OK Talk brings out different social, cultural and ethical viewpoints to design, aiming to create critical and intriguing dialogue between creative practitioners in the two countries. The events gather around twenty design thinkers to share their ideas on key questions for today’s designers. The participants approach the discussion topics through their interests, methods and backgrounds.

OK Talk consists of four breakfast events dealing with altogether three topics: Making Places, Strategies of Participation and Borderlands. The first event will take place in Helsinki on September 4 and the three events after that in London on September 18, 23 and 25. Before this, OK Talk kicks off with a tabloid publication, “a morning paper”, which not only introduces the speakers and the themes but also works as a conversation starter through a participatory narrative.

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

The Snowball project aimed to bring together Finnish and Chinese architecture through two events: one in Kiasma, Helsinki on February 12 and the other in Shanghai on March 25-27, 2010.

The events promoted Sino-Finnish architectural exchange. Tailored for Finnish architects wanting to collaborate with Chinese clients and colleagues, they presented an insight into contemporary opportunities, challenges and ambitions in China and provided the possibility for Finnish architects to present their work to local practitioners.

Snowball Shanghai programme booklet asks what can Finnish and Chinese architects learn from each other.

OK Do edited a programme leaflet for the Snowball Helsinki event as well as a booklet for Snowball Shanghai including articles about the purpose and background of the event as well as a short introduction to the Chinese and Finnish participants.

We also commissioned the design of the event material from Åh who left off with the idea of a snowball effect – a process that builds upon itself, forming a virtuous circle – apt for the series of events bringing together thinking and doing from two cultures. The blue ink snowball grows in size starting from an advertisement and a programme leaflet for Snowball Helsinki and reaching its peak in a programme booklet for Snowball Shanghai.

The project started in May 2010 with a Saturday brunch discussion at Sitra. We invited around ten Helsinki-based people from different fields to imagine a more interesting and enjoyable city and ended up with a bunch of ideas.

Dreaming up life-improving initiatives for Helsinki.

Local delicacies by Maatilatori, a life-improving grocery shop in Helsinki.

At the moment, we are taking about twenty of the ideas forward, consulting experts and compiling them into a set of concrete examples; some easily applicable and some crazier Clues to Open Helsinki. More info on the project to follow.

Marina, Esther and Florence on the construction site of a multicultural kitchen in Kalasatama.

Helsinki inhabits tens of thousands of immigrants who have all brought their memories, habits and delicacies with them. However, for some reason, this barely shows in the cityscape. Ahmet Aslan, the owner of the only Kurdish restaurant in Helsinki, Café Caisa, explains how difficult it is for a foreigner to open a decent eatery in the city. “Already when I came to Finland in the nineties, I wanted to open an à la carte restaurant serving food from my home country,” Ahmet says. “However, I didn’t have a Finnish education at that point, so I wasn’t able to get a license for serving wine – so, I ended up opening a lunch place first. When I finally received a local diploma, I returned to my original plans and put up a proper Kurdish à la carte restaurant in Kaisaniemi.” Café Caisa serves oriental home food including meze plates and fresh salads. “On the side, I also try to provide the customers with some insights to Kurdish culture,” Ahmet adds. He hopes that the Finnish government would learn from the likes of France and give more support to entrepreneurship within the restaurant industry. “This way, we might soon be known for our rich food culture, too,” he notes.

“It’s difficult for a foreigner to open a decent eatery in Helsinki.”

Opening an ethnic kitchen in Helsinki wasn’t easy for half Israeli and half Ukrainian Alexander Bitsak, either. Alexander moved to Finland a couple of years ago because he considered the country, in his own words, the best place in the world. He found a perfect space on Kustaankatu in Kallio for his Ukrainian pelmeni restaurant but, coming from Israeli at the time, was denied entrance to the country by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “So, I left my beautiful space, went to Kiova, and decided to try again,” Alexander explains. “Finally, I returned to Kustaankatu with a Ukrainian passport. Then, I renovated my restaurant and tried to make it special for customers and Finnish friends.” Alexander used to have a pizza place in Israel, but didn’t want to found one in Finland as he believes we have enough pizza already. “As a matter of fact, in addition to Ukrainian food like pelmenis and soups, my menu consists of traditional Finnish delicacies such as Karelian roast (karjalanpaisti) and Finnish fish pasty (kalakukko). It is easy to feel at home at Pelmenit, Alexander’s restaurant – and not just because of the familiar food. “The customers don’t come here only to eat, but rather to meet me,” Alexander says. “I ask how they are, how their family and health is. Unfortunately, now I’ve become so popular that I don’t have time to speak that much anymore.”

Like Alexander, Ahmet and us, also Marina Lindström from the multicultural co-operative Q-Coop thinks that Helsinki needs more ethnic kitchens. That’s why she’s planning to open a big restaurant and central kitchen in Kalasatama, a harbour area freed for residential construction only a few years ago. Her idea is to bring together people and cuisines from all over the world (e.g. West African, Iranian, Ethiopian, Indian and Kurdish) under the same roof, organise lunches, dinners and events as well as prepare food to be sold in smaller kiosks around the city. As her co-workers, the Finnish-born Marina has two Nigerian women, Esther Ademosu and Florence Awoyemi with whom she used to run the Yoruban Kimito Kitchen in Sörnäinen. Like many old harbour areas worldwide, food might help bring interesting people and activities to Kalasatama, too. But more than city planning in its traditional sense, Marina is interested in helping immigrants integrate and making Helsinki’s food culture – and through that, the whole atmosphere of the city – more international and open. After all, in the end, it is the cultural aspects that make a true city.

The article also appears on We Are Helsinki magazine’s food issue, 3/2010.

Daniel Palillo, Nene Tsuboi and the hooded tower of Helsinki Central railway station.

Traditionally known for its architecture, we believe Finland has recently been more innovative in other creative areas such as fashion and art. So, we sat down with Nene Tsuboi and Daniel Palillo to discuss architecture and urban design in Helsinki from another point of view.

While Tsuboi has contributed to the style of the city through architectural projects with NOW for Architecture and Urbanism, she has also designed colourful flags to take over the grey facades of Helsinki. This art project simulated the urban way of drying laundry outside the windows in Japan, Tsuboi’s home country. Palillo, on the other hand, shapes the street scene through his expressive frocks worn by people ranging from grannies to teenage boys all over Helsinki. He is known to be a big fan of the Austrian painter and architect Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser (1928-2000), famous for his experimental projects in urban environments. “Hundertwasser made his own clothes from what he found on the street,” Palillo tells. “He also had projects where people could, for example, paint anything a meter outside their own window in a block of flats.”

Nene Tsuboi enjoys city planning that is not too planned.

Tsuboi finds the spontaneous evolution of places very interesting, and enjoys city planning that is not too planned. “Walking past Tokoinranta almost every morning, I have noticed a melted spot full of ducks in the middle of the ice,” she explains. “One day, The Public Works Department had put up a sign with biological images of ducks as well as information on the species. The place became an official bird-watching spot by accident.” This kind of attitude makes Helsinki a more interesting place. Tsuboi tells that one of her urban design projects with NOW was based on the idea of giving people spaces and seeing what kind of places they make out of them. In the same vein, Palillo is planning to turn his backyard in Ullanlinna into a movie theater next summer.

Finding the digital clock and the hood with a 1:1 print of the building underneath covering the construction site in the tower of the Helsinki Central railway station (normally displaying an analog clock) a good design solution, we talked about dressing up buildings with Palillo and Tsuboi. “Construction sites could be vanished in the spirit of David Copperfield’s airplane trick where he uses a mirror and some smoke to make a plane disappear,” Palillo says. “The City Planning Department should hire magicians!”

“The City Planning Department should hire magicians!” – Daniel Palillo

“Being Japanese, I find it interesting how the functions of buildings are changed from offices to apartments here without the exterior changing at all,” Tsuboi says. “Looking at Helsinki facades, the inside of the buildings is a mystery while in Japan, the purpose of a building is clearly visible from the outside, and when the function changes, they change the whole building.” She likes the big sheets outside Ateneum, the Finnish National Gallery, that tell it’s an art museum. “What if more buildings had costumes saying ‘I’m a home for many kids!’ or ‘I’m a hospital!’?,” Tsuboi suggests.

Cream, whole milk, sugar, egg yolks, green tea powder and vanilla sticks – the ingredients for Misty green sundae.

In ice cream, all the building materials of food – fat, sugar, proteins, water and air – play their part (see e.g. Anu Hopia’s book Kemiaa keittiössä in Finnish). All the standard states of substance come together in ice cream: it is a solution (sugar dissolved in water), a suspension (mixture of solid and liquid), a foam (mixture of air and liquid) and an emulsion (mixture of fat and water). In addition, water takes three different forms in ice cream: solid (ice crystals), liquid (the part that’s left unfrozen) and vapour (steam in the air bubbles). The complexity of its structure makes ice cream a perfect research subject for molecular gastronomy, a scientific discipline that studies the physical and chemical processes that occur while cooking.

Mixing the ingredients.

While molecular gastronomy seeks to investigate and explain the chemical reasons behind the transformation of ingredients like, for example, why different cooking temperatures make different eggs, it also looks at the social, artistic and technical components of culinary phenomena at large. The term “Molecular and Physical Gastronomy” was coined in 1988 by a Hungarian physicist Nicholas Kurti and a French physical chemist Hervé This. “I think it is a sad reflection on our civilization that while we can and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus we do not know what goes on inside our soufflés,” Kurti explained his interest in molecular gastronomy. In addition to his studies in ingredients, Kurti also worked on new cooking techniques such as making meringue in a vacuum chamber or cooking sausages by connecting them across a car battery.

“It is a sad reflection on our civilization that while we can and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus we do not know what goes on inside our soufflés.” – Nicholas Kurti

While it feels natural that chefs are fascinated about things like the structure of food or new methods of approaching ingredients, the public interest towards molecular gastronomy seems to be increasing as well. “People are interested in the origins of food – in what they put in their mouth – and molecular dishes often look impressive,” restaurant Luomo’s Jouni Toivanen says. “On the other hand, I’ve heard people refuse to eat molecular food, thinking that it’s something artificial or dangerous. To them, I’ve explained that they are made out of molecules themselves.”

Cooking the mixture in a vacuum bag in 82 °C water for 12 minutes.

Toivanen got interested in molecular gastronomy by working in Spain for a year and getting to know Ferran Adrià‘s late El Bulli restaurant. “However, while Adrià draws on the food industry in new additives for dishes, I prefer Heston Blumenthal‘s [the owner of Fat Duck] approach which looks into existing ingredients and what new things can be done with them,” Toivanen explains. Blumenthal, like Pierre Gagnaire in Paris, works together with a chemist. In their case, scientific food discoveries are made in a true cross kitchen.

Sieving the cooled-down mixture for the blender.

Toivanen’s small kitchen laboratory in Kruununhaka, Helsinki, has discovered dishes such as a forest granita with spruce buds, berries, steaming dry ice and forest scent, or ‘Organic egg 64,7°C’. While Adrià defines his cooking as deconstructivist, Toivanen talks about re-creating stories with his food, like taking people mentally to the forest, while they’re actually having dinner in his restaurant.

Almost ready.

Misty green sundae

0,5 l cream
0,5 l whole milk
10 egg yolks
2,5 dl sugar
3 pcs vanilla sticks (with seeds squeezed out)
One teaspoon of green tea powder
Roasted halva crumbs

Mix everything together. Cook the mixture in a vacuum bag (or bain-marie) in 82 °C water for 12 minutes. Cool the liquid down (ideally letting it marinate over night in the fridge), sieve it and pour it into a blender. Add liquid nitrogen (-156 °C) into the mix while constantly stirring the liquid (alternatively, use an ice cream maker or put the liquid into the freezer giving it an occasional stir until frozen). Scoop the ready-made ice cream and place it on a bed of roasted halva crumbs.

Adding the liquid nitrogen for a mist.

Better City by Biking, OK Do's first column for We Are Helsinki magazine.

The first OK Do column for We Are Helsinki features a meeting with Marek Salermo, a former cyclist in the Belgian racing team, as well as a bicycle traffic planner working for the City of Helsinki. So far we’ve also met up with artists and designers Daniel Palillo and Nene Tsuboi to talk about dressing up Helsinki and asked local restaurant owners of foreign origin how food can make a city. In addition to these articles, all our Helsinki stories appear on the OK Do site, too.

Dressing Up Helsinki, the second column for We Are Helsinki magazine.

Food Makes a City, the third column for We Are Helsinki magazine.