Having become acquainted with BLESS through an interview with Désirée Heiss and Ines Kaag, the duo behind the conceptual fashion label, a couple of weeks ago we found ourselves eating their scoubidou candy lace tank tops as part of BLESS N°42 Plädoyer de Jetztzeit presentation at Paris Fashion Week. …(more)

OK Talk brings together designers, artists and theorists operating in Finland and Britain to talk about emerging questions in design philosophy and strategic design. The series of events started at Helsinki Design Week on September 4, and travels to London Design Festival on September 18, 23 and 25, 2010. Get your copy of the OK Talk London tabloid at HEL YES! pop-up restaurant and exhibition (Londonnewcastle Depot, 1-3 Wenlock Road, London N1 7SL) or Design Forum Finland (Erottajankatu 7, Helsinki). …(more)

Utrecht invited us to take part in a MUJI exhibition around a new paper chair at ATELIER MUJI, Mujirushi Ryohin Yurakucho from August 20 to September 8, 2010. The idea of the project is to explore the joy of making the paper chair by hands and find different ways to use it through asking 50 designers to modify the product and create a special chair for an exhibition. We made ‘Rinne / 輪廻’, a paper chair reincarnated as nutritious ash for plants. …(more)

Ever since starting OK Do, we’ve had issues with calling ourselves a design think tank – or design-whatever for that matter – but didn’t manage to find other compact enough words to describe what we do. We’re anguished by the word ‘design’ as well as the world of design, yet see no other way out than creating our own sphere within it. …(more)

Hello from Helsinki 2012! Clues to Open Helsinki project by OK Do and Sitra explored the role of design in the contemporary city through gathering ideas that grasp the concept of Open Helsinki, the theme of the becoming World Design Capital year 2012, and turning them into a set of “clues” – structural tools with an aim to inspire decision makers in the process towards a more interesting and open city. To celebrate the resulting set of postcards from the future, we organised a party at one of our favourite Helsinki sites, the Palm House of Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden, as part of Helsinki Design Week 2010.

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Mr. Children project brings together children and professionals in the context of fashion. It explores the idea of children as head designers and adults as assistants and consumers. …(more)

Last week, I curated a retrospective exhibition for the design agency Kokoro & Moi at Utrecht’s NOW IDeA gallery in Aoyama, Tokyo. The exhibition revolved around two events: organising a paper airplane workshop of the printed exhibition material with Mr. Takuo Toda, a local aerogami expert and the holder of the world record for the longest paper plane flight, and cooking Finnish food for Tokyo Design Week visitors at the gallery with Apartamento magazine. Focusing on people, the events depict a change of focus from strategies of display to strategies of participation. …(more)

See, think, do is a series of texts by Tuomas Toivonen (NOW for Architecture and Urbanism) attempting to articulate the relevant elements in the work of an architect today. The part three of the series sets out to ask how creativity should be harnessed for a better reality. …(more)

Lessons learned is a series of writings by Hans Park depicting the life of a Tokyo architect. The fourth part of the series explores the idea of designing and encouraging societal change. The topic is related to Hans’ work with Dekimasen, an organisation that he co-founded for finding keys to positive societal development in Japan.

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See, think, do is a series of texts by Tuomas Toivonen (NOW for Architecture and Urbanism) attempting to articulate the relevant elements in the work of an architect today. The second part of the series deals with audience – the frame of reference. Being both an architect and a musician, Tuomas is accustomed to different types of crowds. …(more)