OK Do having BLESS candy tops for dinner.

The German title of the collection, ‘pleading for the present time’ says it: the BLESS state of mind is all about this very instant and the joy that comes along with being “present”. Celebrating the here and now, Désirée Heiss and Ines Kaag focused on food and different ways of having it in their Spring/Summer 2011 designs. The collection aimed to redefine the co-existence between nutrition and clothing, and proposed modifications to eating habits through, for example, new ways of sharing food among friends. It included not only edible garments, or jewellery that could be used as tableware, but also S/M/L trousers that adapt to changes in the body, being able to grow or shrink according to fluctuations in one’s size.

The presentation took place in an old church turned into a home in the heart of Bastille. In the manner of an installation, the models – friends of BLESS – were placed in different, open rooms and given various tasks to perform around food and drinks: some served champagne from a pyramid built as a piece of architecture in corner of the hall, others compiled Bloody Marys in the kitchen or took popcorn baths in the bathroom, while we were placed in the teenagers’ room with Japanese shoe designer Masahiro Kikutani and asked to wear gummy lace and liquorice tops which we were to eat during the show. Style-free and gender-free, as characteristic to the label, we wore classic multicoloured BLESS pieces underneath the candy topping.

Champagne wall and jewelled food.

From our point of view, the evening was a sweet and sticky human experiment. Having been confined to our room during the presentation – and given the instructions “just to entertain ourselves” while there – we projected our inner teen spirits onto the situation and tried to make the best out of what the environment had to offer by not only eating the garments but also talking, taking naps on the bed or playing Kraftwerk LPs on a record player found in the corner. Unaware of what was happening in the other rooms and somewhat at sea in front of the photographers who came to capture the event, we felt conscious about our activities and the fact of being observed. Our modelling took spontaneous turns from playing out the fashion fantasy to attempts of ignoring what was going on outside our room. In the end, it seems that the figment took over.

Popcorn bath.

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.
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Registration

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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

The infinity of design

“Design is the planning that lays the basis for the making of every object or system. It can be used both as a noun and as a verb and, in a broader way, it means applied arts and engineering.” Wikipedia nails it – design includes way too many things. It can refer to the planning process or to the final solution, and the fields of application as well as the forms that the end results may take are infinite. Some designers define their area of expertise very carefully whereas others assume the role of a generalist. In the latter case, evaluation of the design outcomes becomes harder, and there’s a distinct danger of a professional identity crisis. On the other hand, who came up with the idea to separate fields like design, art and science to begin with? The idea of designers being able to escape the world of design into other areas of life and work is actually very interesting.

Post-materialist design

The contemporary design industry is built on post-materialist needs (belonging, esteem, and aesthetic and intellectual satisfaction) instead of material needs (hunger, thirst and physical security) immediately linked with survival. Design for self-expression often lacks the functionality which originally distinguished the field from art. However, this kind of design is typically also missing the criticism that art provides. Instead of asking questions, design usually answers them, at least those asked by the market. Sometimes it feels like designers wishing to steer clear from making a profit aren’t considered designers at all.

Open design

Helsinki’s strategy for the World Design Capital year is to “embed design in life”, involving citizens in designing a better city. Opening up the field of design for critical discussion among the common public, as well as among professionals from other fields, could move the focus away from the glossy surface of the design industry. Yet, in practice, sharing the actual act of designing with the public is no less problematic than other crises design has recently come across. To overcome this dilemma, Helsinki needs to create intelligent tools and strategies for participation – and think beyond the word and the world of design while doing it.

Photo courtesy of Hertta Kiiski.

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. Photo courtesy of Kaarle Hurtig.

After the workshop, we started taking the ideas forward, consulting experts and compiling our strategic design proposals into a set of concrete examples; some easily applicable and some crazier Clues to Open Helsinki. The team was also joined by illustrator Nene Tsuboi and graphic designer Anna Mikkola. In the end, we presented the ideas in the form of 17 + 1 postcards from the future.

Photos courtesy of Hertta Kiiski.

Here’s a couple of examples picked up from the set of postcards from Helsinki 2012:

A City of All Shapes and Sizes

In 2012, the city is built from the bottom up. There is more variation in the urban pattern: townhouses, bigger complexes, new and old buildings next to each other. Communal housing is becoming popular and people combine living and working under the same roof. A lotting system is introduced to distribute the urban spaces for different organisations.

Katu Mayors

In 2012, Katu (‘street’ in Finnish) Mayors live in the neighbourhood and are elected by their peers. They participate in city-level planning relevant to the area and ensure that the residents and local businesses are heard, breathing diversity into the city. These local trustees are supported by grants and permits which allow them to manage the environment, services and facilities.

Winter Holidays

In 2012, the unique seasonal circumstances of Helsinki are cherished through moving part of the holiday from summer to winter. Today, people stay in the city for most of the summer, making it more active, enjoyable as well as attractive for tourists. The value in cold and short Helsinki days will be discovered through encouraging interaction between people in the winter, too.

Urbane Industry

Few places have a craft legacy as strong as Finland. In 2012 the local talents have been saved from the brink of extinction through programmes to encourage and foster small scale industry in the heart of the city. Multicultural skills merge in the new collaborations between designers and manufacturers working closely together.

Finally, we organised a party on the occasion of the postcards from the future. Held at the Palm House of Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden, referenced in the set of clues as a living room in the city that could be used more actively, the event also featured super raw chocolate smoothies and music by the Katu Mayor of our choice Timo Kaukolampi.

Photos courtesy of Hertta Kiiski.

Please find more information as well as the rest of the clues at www.cluestoopenhelsinki.fi.

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. 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.