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 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.

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.

Organised by fashion designer Daniel Palillo and us, the project will result in a clothing collection for adults as well as documentary material on the design process. It will involve 10 children aged around 5-8 and a crew of professional producers, design assistants, pattern and dressmakers, stylists and photographers. The idea is to encourage children and adults to collaborate and use their creative abilities in an ambitious project which is, at the same time, all about play!

The Mr. Children project will start with a design workshop for children designers and adult pattern makers during Helsinki Design Week in autumn. At this point, the children will collaborate with the pattern makers to make sketches of their clothing items based on a set of chosen textiles and basic patterns for shirts, dresses and leggings. After the workshop, the designs will be forwarded to the sewers and finally displayed in an exhibition and look book.

Everyday life recipes. Photo by Paavo Lehtonen.

1. Food

I sat down with Apartamento magazine’s Omar Sosa, Marco Velardi and Leen Hilde Haesen to talk about their magazine and TASCA – Everyday life recipes cooking event at NOW IDeA gallery.

Apartamento is a bi-annual post-materialist interior magazine based in Barcelona and Milan. It shows people organising their daily environment with a focus on personal expression rather than top-down design, and old stuff rather than new stuff. “We don’t portray designers just because they’re designers, but only if they’re interesting – like anyone,” Omar explains. “Nowadays, people can make more and more things for themselves with the ever developing materials and tools.”

Founded only a couple of years ago, Apartamento is more than the magazine. Their plan is to make books, organise collaborations and curate exhibitions. In Tokyo, the team consisting of a designer, a photographer and a journalist was turned into chefs and waitresses, cooking and serving lunch for the NOW IDeA visitors during Tokyo Design Week and our exhibition. “We like to do things ourselves, something engaging for both us and our readers,” Marco says. “We like to hang out with people on a daily basis and organise things like TASCA. Here, people can actually taste and discuss what we have cooked instead of only reading it in the magazine’s cooking section.”

The TASCA event not only celebrated the release of the fourth issue, a Japanese edition of the magazine, but it also demonstrated the Apartamento lifestyle that sees beauty in everyday things. This lifestyle has earlier been explored through a London exhibition on the pottery collection of an “everyday life collector”, like Marco describes Richard Lamb, an unknown collector of pottery from garage and jumble sales for 15 years.

Just like The everyday life collector exhibition, TASCA brought people together around the art of mundane activities. Cooking food, sharing recipes and meeting people over for lunch must be the most everyday strategies of participation there are. Food sparks discussion, like we found out when taking part in TASCA with Kokoro & Moi to cook Finnish wild mushroom soup to puzzled Japanese. “You usually end up in interesting conversations as you have to sit down, not only going around with a drink in a party,” Leen says. “And, from the cook’s perspective…” Marco grins, wearing an apron “… people will remember you for what you do – for sharing your personality with them.”

“People will remember you for what you do – for sharing your personality with them.”

Tokyo hands. Photo by Teemu Suviala.

2. Aerogami

The Air Current/Past exhibition was to present the graphic works of Kokoro & Moi, my second home, from a new perspective. Depicting a journey instead of the destination and exploring the elements of variation, collaboration and play in the design agency’s projects over the past eight years, the exhibition took on a participatory format. It featured an aerogami workshop by Takuo Toda, the head of the Japan Origami Airplane Association and the holder of the world record for the longest paper plane flight, 27.9 seconds.

We ended up gathering at the NOW IDeA gallery with a group of aerogami apprentices and a stack of A4 prints that presented a retrospective take on Kokoro & Moi’s work. Led by Mr. Toda, our sensei, we then set out to the nearby Farmer’s market for the outdoor workshop.

Changing his grey suit to the Origami Airplane Association’s blue vest, Toda looked professional as he is. He explained his plans to go transatmospheric, flying a paper plane to earth from outer space (an idea actually being tested with the Japanese space agency JAXA) and demonstrated the making of his signature planes. After folding their own aerogamies out of Kokoro & Moi prints, the workshop participants could fly them at the market, jointly producing an exhibition in the air.

An exhibition in the air. Photo by Teemu Suviala.

Like TASCA, the paper airplane workshop was an experiment in participation. Only this time, the strategy was in the making, or learning by doing with expert instructions. Be it a free lunch or free know-how, both strategies of participation resulted in new situations and collaborations – post-materialist content for everyday life.

Sometimes reality takes its own course. A pool turned into a skate spot in Southern Finland.

3. Reality

When ideas, plans or proposals become the basis for thought or action, and thus participate in the production of reality, they choreograph changes in society, the city and nature; in human and natural habitats. From this point of view, all creative work becomes an investment, potential shares in future reality. Through work, what kind of future can we imagine and possibly create? Leaving a mark, making a difference, and having offspring are basic human traits, necessities of a meaningful life. If the aim is to participate in the contemporary condition and influence the future, what methods will yield the best results? How big or small can we frame this involvement? Each human has limited time and capacity. How to spend our efforts wisely? How to define success?

"I never have time to laze around."

Experiencing it

I have recently grown an interest towards social change, and not only exploring it but also delivering it and promoting it as a source for personal development and a tool against boredom. In Asia, observing change is effortless when looking at speedy economic and urban development. However, change in social attitudes lags behind. Meanwhile, somewhere else the development of egalitarian social attitudes flourishes while urban development remains stagnant. Why is this?

In places, communities and nations where the collective memory and the experience of change are fresh, it is easier to find the fringes that will grow to challenge the status quo. These communities are probably also good at putting a handle on change as a tangible activity suited for their needs, visions and hopes.

The question is, why are some communities better at seeking change, producing it and adapting to it while others stand still. The communities which understand the value of change are also likely to understand that the engine for change can be anyone. It can be started up by anything. Change is not an inherited talent – it needs to be practiced, experienced and developed for it to find its place in a society.

No, we can’t

Many never experience positive change. People live in the margins of society, belong to discriminated communities or fall into a category that does not generate enough representation for their voices to be heard. In places where voting is not enough to achieve a better future, other public-based mechanisms need to be discovered. The question remains if there is a way to bypass government, special interest think tanks and the media to create change.

In January, shortly after Barack Obama took office, I gathered with friends in Tokyo for dinner ending up in a conversation on the seemingly impossible notion of positive and enduring change in Japan. The general opinion was that there is little or no hope for social change here, and that pursuing change is pointless. No, we can’t, we chanted. In the midst of optimism for change in America there was something relieving in admitting powerlessness in this part of the world and approaching change through negation.

Early 2009 Tokyo launched its now unsuccessful Olympic Games 2016 bid with its Japanese slogan ‘Because of Japan, we can’ (Nihon dakara dekiru). However, for us, ‘Because of Japan, we can’t’ (Nihon dakara dekimasen) seemed more appropriate and inspirational. And with these ingredients and the decision to dig deeper into the local inability for change, the Dekimasen project was born.

Finding it difficult to envision what Dekimasen could turn into we asked people about the areas in which they feel they have no voice or no power to bring about positive change for themselves or in the society. The common reply to the question was ‘I don’t know’ but with more time for contemplation the answers grew personal, diverse and interesting. The round of interviews with people triggered the idea to document and share topics or issues that the public finds difficult to overcome in Japan.

The Dekimasen project is an exercise to create change in a place that rarely sees it. Starting by looking for clues and keys to systemic ways of gathering information and voices of the public for the public we try to create a categorised ‘database of voices’. This will hopefully open doors for more ideas and conversations that lead to a future of many positive changes. Perhaps one day we can.

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.

Imagined audience by a highway in Northern Finland.

2. Audience

Discussion and critique generate another kind of public space, also co-created, sustained and shaped by its participants. A poor critical climate will undermine all parties, but a quality audience can stimulate exceptional performances. It is therefore our role and duty not only to be good actors, but also best spectators. In addition to actual witnesses, those directly exposed to our actions, there is another relevant forum: our perceived audience. This is our frame of reference for respect, indirectly influencing our thoughts and actions.

Spatial interpretation on the South Bank in London. Photo by Kaarle Hurtig.

What does an architect do?

1) Constructs a point of view by gathering a base of relevant knowledge through observation and analysis.
2) Accumulates and articulates a body of thought through research, experiment, discussion, teaching and writing.
3) Makes a contribution to reality by designing, planning, proposing and building.

The task of the architect can thus be summed up as: see, think, do.

1. Activity

Space itself is neutral, but it is always in context, and can be moulded to any use, mood or situation. Here could be a forest, or a highway, a home, a prison, a factory, a school, a marketplace. Thus space is modulated, refined, defined and condensed by architecture. Becoming thicker and thicker with context, it becomes urban and populated. Space invites us all to define it, to become its co-producers. As a platform for common activity, it also creates shared value: a sense of community. This is the public condition. All space contains this potential, when in the context of human activity and architecture.

While modernist principles described the building as a rational spatial derivative of its purpose, or function, late 20th century architecture sought to do more by manipulating program, its malleable stepchild. Program has an ulterior motive, a built-in code of behaviour, rendering people in spaces subject to its logic. If the scope of architecture is reframed to comprise activity, space becomes open again ― open for interpretation, part of the extended context, inviting the possibility of the unprogrammed, the participation of both the individual and the public. Society and city are thus both made of people and by people.

Architecture, being both the object and subject of human activity, is the key to unlock the potential of the public condition. With participation as a resource, what new open processes can be choreographed for buildings, spaces, objects? How are present hierarchies, policies and processes adopting these new open resources? What kind of liberties and limitations can be created, allocated and distributed to empower, motivate and guide those involved? How can architecture create this freedom and define these responsibilities?

NEWLY DRAWN is a publication on emerging Finnish architects. Photo by Paavo Lehtonen.

Toivonen’s statements will also be published as part of NEWLY DRAWN, a joint project by nine emerging Finnish architecture practices offering an easy access to architecture to the general public through publications, exhibitions and workshops around the world. Moreover, the series of writings creates a foundation for Tuomas’ next music release, Subtitles.

1. The internet leaves no one creating in a vacuum.

You have worked on different Access to Knowledge and copyright reform projects. Is that what an openness evangelist does?

I go around telling everybody about the advantages of openness in cultural production. I have worked as a volunteer for the Creative Commons for five years now and people seem to be pretty religious about it – about open licensing. There are even figures like Richard Stallman (a.k.a. rms), the man who invented free software, who’s actually wearing a CD-ROM as a halo on top of his head when giving talks.

But you also have a background in traditional media. How did you get interested in free culture?

I made an interview of Lawrence Lessig on Danish national radio’s cyber culture programme Harddisken, where I was freelancing around the time of the publication of his book Free Culture (2004). I got really inspired by his thoughts as they promoted ideals that I had only been introduced through science fiction and cyberpunk before. Reading Lessig got me into thinking about ways to create agreements that would formalise the “hacker ethic” you see online – and make a system that’s closer to how copyright should be on the internet.

Free culture was also tackled in your documentary film Good Copy Bad Copy a few years ago. The film presents emerging creative practices, which build on remixing. How do you think the internet has affected visual and audio production?

To begin with, we are seeing a change from a society where people produce physical objects into a society designing immaterial products. Unexpected things are going to happen. Most importantly, the idea of a romantic genious starting his/her work from point zero coming up with something completely new and having a sacred right to that work doesn’t apply anymore. The internet makes ideas travel and leaves no one creating in a vacuum. It’s definitely easier for anyone to be creative nowadays. There’s so much shared culture. You take a bit of something from others and remix. The challenging part is “who really owns what”, as one character in the film puts it. It’s very human to want credit and respect for one’s work, but ownership is something different, which conflicts with immaterial works.

“The internet leaves no one creating in a vacuum.”

Do you see the roles of a professional and an amateur merging within these fields? Furthermore, is the dichotomy even meaningful anymore?

I believe that the difference between a professional and an amateur has to do with money. A professional makes money and an amateur doesn’t – but it doesn’t make either one better or worse at what they do. The concept of money is definitely challenged by the internet. If I think of myself, I’ve learned a lot of things by doing, and I like to collaborate with people just to do new stuff. I don’t need to be rich but I need enough money to have a flat and travel a bit. I think a lot of people are like that. They make some things for money and other things for free. And they are willing to share their knowledge, which makes them richer. Things always come back to them. The problem is that once you start assuming that you are better because you make a lot of money, there will be ten other people who are as good. I think that everyone should be able to communicate on the same level regardless of their income and help each other develop further.

2. Sharing knowledge makes people richer.

You work at Socialsquare tackling new ways of designing digital processes, products and tools. Do you think about the “pro-am phenomenon” (Leadbeater, 2008) in your work there?

At Socialsquare, we support inclusive design that is open for development by many people. It’s inspiring how several mass concepts (e.g. Firefox) have emerged from hackers playing with open source software. Drawing on that, we want to design processes, products and tools to further fruitful participation.

“Processes, products and tools should be designed to further fruitful participation.”

While the boundaries between professionalism and amateurism are blurring, new business models are needed. There’s a lot of talk on attention economy, experience economy, sharing economy, local economy and so on. What do you see as the new kinds of currencies emerging from the contemporary creative sphere?

I think that attention is the currency of today. However, people’s attention span is getting shorter as they get more links, tweets and all that stuff fed to them all the time. And they have a habit of swarming to certain topics – that’s what the Slashdot effect is all about. Sometimes they go all wrong. Being required to have an opinion on everything makes it easy to promote the wrong things as well as make misinterpretations. In other words, one can quickly engage with a lot of things yet he or she needs to decide what really earns their attention. So maybe we should talk about value as the currency of tomorrow.

How are people being recognised and rewarded on collaborative media platforms? How can the price of different contributions be calculated in remixed material?

They get respect, like for instance on eBay. On Wikipedia, you can see who’s the main architect of an article. The systems of reward and honour are intricate. It’s really difficult to formulate a good system – especially when it comes to things like films or books where you don’t have the source visible like in open source software. Putting value to ideas is difficult, yet we all need money. Also, people are obsessed with free stuff and many artists just want people to experience their creations. Today, one really has to give up control over copyright in the traditional sense and come up with new logics of earning.

3. Attention is the currency of today.

You are the Creative Commons public project lead in Denmark. Why do you support CC licensing? How do you think that copyright should react to the changes in creative practices and vice versa?

Creative Commons is based on free software licenses (GPL, etc.). It’s the first, the biggest and the most constructive system around. It builds on copyright (unlike e.g. the thinking behind Pirate Bay which has promoted abolition of copyright) and the group behind it is smart. I also like how the Creative Commons changes dynamically. It reflects on the community behind it instead of just fixing a law, which should always be obeyed even if it’s not in touch with its users.

Watch Good Copy Bad Copy, a documentary about the current state of copyright and culture by Henrik Moltke, Andreas Johnsen and Ralf Christensen at http://www.goodcopybadcopy.net.

Markus Miessen at his home office in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin.

I think your multidisciplinary way of working has a fresh approach to architecture and urbanism. Do you have a blueprint for design?

It’s a very difficult question to answer because it’s so generic, and at the same time design is usually something very specific. It can be something big, something small, something physical or non-physical, it can be a policy, something on paper; it can even be a timetable or an event. There are also two paradigms of work: one of them is a self-initiated process and the other is a project commissioned by someone from the outside.

However, looking at the latter paradigm my doctrine is that whenever someone approaches you with a brief or with their own question, the most productive way to deal with it is to ask yourself this question in a more critical way.

Also, when you design, you shouldn’t have a preset format for answering your question. I mean, if someone approaches me with a brief for a building, it might as well be that after some serious testing of ideas the most favourable solution turns out not a physical one. Let me refer to Cedric Price who once said that an unhappy couple might be better advised to get a divorce rather than build a dream house.

“If someone approaches me with a brief for a building, the most favourable solution might turn out not a physical one.”

You operate somewhere in between design and research touching both the academic field and the field of popular culture in your work. What makes you take up certain projects?

Ok, to add to what I just said, there are actually three different kinds of projects: one is the self-initiated kind, the other is the commissioned kind and the third one is something purely economy-related. So, the last one is obviously the most boring and the first one is the most interesting.

With nOffice we do mostly commissioned architectural or urban projects and Studio Miessen is about research, teaching, writing, curating and so on. My problem is that with nOffice we’re a little bit idealistic and we don’t do things for the money. And with Studio Miessen almost all the work apart from the teaching and writing is independent research, which no one obviously pays for. So, most of the projects I do are based more or less on personal interest, me being a curious kind of guy.

One way to maintain my lifestyle is to take up economy-related projects on the side – teach or do some commercial writing for magazines. And in the best case these projects become an extension of my practice. Like when I was teaching at the Berlage Insitute, we did a student project in Brazil where nOffice happened to be building a library. The student project resulted in a thorough exploration of the social context of building in Brazil – something that would never have been possible within the framework of the commissioned project itself.

“Most of my projects are based on personal interest, me being a curious kind of guy.”

What motivates you to work on independent projects around and about architecture?

To my mind, architecture in its traditional sense almost makes you stop doing things. It’s a praxis of delay, which means that whatever you do it will take forever. It’s never on time, it’s usually more expensive than you thought, and there are always fights. There’s this great myth around architecture, e.g. in Germany they have made surveys on what’s the most respected job and for some reason architects always end up in top three after doctors and lawyers whilst I would say it’s a really bad job: you’re being used politically, you work crazy hours and the pay is bad. Of course I’m interested in architecture but at the same time I’m not so sure about the sustainability of the industry, and I guess that’s what motivates me to do something out of the ordinary.

You have said that you are most interested in the political work of spatial practitioners – “projects, where authorships start to blur”. Can you give me an example of a project like this?

In 2007 I was invited to do a pavilion at the Lyon Biennial with a brief to communicate the most interesting architectural and spatial practices in the first decade of the 21st century. Instead of composing a list of what’s hot I decided to do something more topical and think about Europe at that moment. This was right after the constitutional referendum had failed and I wanted to explore why this might have happened – why people mistrusted Europe and didn’t see potential in it. My hypothesis was that if they didn’t understand Europe as a space they couldn’t trust it as an institution either.

The project was called The Violence of Participation. We invited a hundred artists, architects, curators, writers, cultural producers, politicians, etc. worldwide to send us an A4 visualization of their spatial perception of Europe. Then we designed a big round table, which is typically seen as a space for mediation or negotiation but turned it into something opposite by placing vertical fins on it, making it a space of exclusion with several booth-like sections. The table was displayed in Lyon together with the hundred visualizations that were corrupted by people sitting in the booths, drawing their own perceptions of Europe on top of them.

The Violence of Participation, the exhibition. Photo by Markus Miessen.

The Violence of Participation, the book. Photo by Markus Miessen.

What new do you think a designer can bring into political discourse?

It’s certainly not an exclusive quality that an architect or a designer has, but more an outsider-perspective with curiosity and healthy intellect that makes the discourse more fruitful. I think outsiders are often more productive in terms of interesting thinking than insiders. It’s all about approaching a topic with certain naivety, from the perspective of an amateur. The questions you ask are genuine because you aren’t looking for a consensus but an answer. I actually write about the subject in my new book, Cross-Bench Praxis (out Nov, 2009). The book reflects on a conflictual mode of participation through looking at cross-bench politicians in the British parliamentary system – the people with no ties to the political parties at play.

“I think outsiders are often more productive in terms of interesting thinking than insiders.”

At the moment, you’re working on a new book, doing your PhD for the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths in London and running nOffice. How do you find time for doing all this, and do you see your professional life take over your private life?

Private life is a very difficult term. I’m totally happy about what I’m doing and sometimes I don’t even feel like I’m working because I’m just doing what interests me. But then there’s also a very different level of private life. For instance the time I spend with my girlfriend. She comes from a totally different background in terms of working so with her it’s easy to make a distinction between work and non-work. It’s almost like we have this natural mode of switching off together. For example, I do most of my work at home in the library, which is located next to the living room where my girlfriend usually spends her time when she comes home from work. This might sound funny but the moment I leave my “work world” to enter the living room it’s like a complete break. All the pressure drops in the living room. My girlfriend also leads a very structured life going to the office at nine in the morning and coming back at eight, and she only works from Monday to Friday. Now, I’ve started to structure my life according to her – with the exception that I always start my days at 5.30 in the morning.

That’s early! It reminds me of a project of yours with Hans-Ulrich Obrist, the Brutally Early Club. Can you tell me about that?

When I was living in London we worked on a couple of projects with Hans-Ulrich, but the problem was that neither Hans nor me had enough time to arrange proper meetings to discuss things during the days. So we decided to do it super early. We would meet at a café at 6am, spend three hours talking and getting things done. This event was soon given the name Brutally Early Club and we started to invite other people to join, using it as a platform to meet people who would for instance be in London for only one night. And we started doing it in other cities, too.

You work very internationally with projects in Brazil, the US, Europe, and the Middle East. However, your office is based in Berlin. What does it mean to have an office here? Does the city have an effect on your thinking and doing?

Well, there are different realities: one is the financial reality, the other has to do with infrastructure and services, and the third one is time. In terms of financial decision making Berlin is pretty straightforward simply because it’s cheap. The infrastructure is also pretty efficient, and this has to do with time as well. Compared to e.g. London, my former home city, where you waste a lot of time in travelling to places, even going to the airport only takes 15 minutes here. London also puts this certain pressure on you all the time. Here, this pressure doesn’t exist. Of course you can look at it in a skeptical way saying that if there’s no pressure, people just hang out, which obviously happens a lot, too. But if you’re very committed to your energy and don’t lose it, Berlin becomes very productive. The lack of pressure, both social and financial, gives you freedom to think in new directions – and play the cross-bench practitioner, if you will.