OK Talk is a platform for bringing people together to discuss and develop the societal role and practices of the creative field. It combines different skills and approaches in events and publications with the aim to generate critical discourse, including asking relevant questions, raising insight and bringing forth tools for designers and artists to put to use.

OK Talk WDC discussion in June 2011 with Carson Chan, Kaarina Gould, Tommi Laitio and us. Photo courtesy of Bernhard Ludewig.

The OK Talk session at DMY opened up a discussion around alternative models of creative practice in Helsinki and Berlin, while reflecting on their value and support structures. The hour-long talk was accompanied by short presentations on different aspects to the topic by each of the participants.

Participants

Carson Chan, Architecture Writer and Curator / PROGRAM

Carson Chan presented PROGRAM, an initiative for art and architecture collaborations that tests the disciplinary boundaries of architecture through exhibitions, events and a residency programme in Mitte, Berlin and online.

Kaarina Gould, Programme Director / World Design Capital Helsinki 2012

Kaarina Gould presented Helsinki’s agenda for the World Design Capital 2012 project, which uses design to support cultural, social, and economic development in the city. The year of events under the theme ‘Open Helsinki’ aims to set a global standard, while serving as a meeting place for the world’s design community.

Tommi Laitio, Researcher / Demos Helsinki

Tommi Laitio presented his work on cultural politics and citizen participation with Demos Helsinki, a think tank for developing democracy to suit the needs and capabilities of the 21st century and the Dutch platform Premsela’s Republic of Design programme, striving to stimulate the development of design into an open cultural field.

Anni Puolakka & Jenna Sutela, Writers and Curators / OK Do

Anni Puolakka and Jenna Sutela presented a residency project that turns empty spaces in different cities into arenas of site-specific collaboration as well as temporary homes for OK Do, their peripatetic creative practice and online journal for bridging design, art and society.

Carson Chan, Kaarina Gould and Tommi Laitio. Photo courtesy of Bernhard Ludewig.

The event also saw the launch of ‘OK Talk Helsinki/London’, a book drawing from a series of earlier OK Talk discussions between twenty Finland- and UK-based designers, artists and theorists in autumn 2010. In addition to the best parts of the talks, the publication widens the discourse, offering new perspectives to design through essays, interviews and visual material. It is edited by OK Do and designed by Åh, including contributions by Åbäke, Bryan Boyer, Martti Kalliala, Zak Kyes, Markus Miessen, Karen Mirza, Anni Puolakka, Jenna Sutela, Teemu Suviala and Finn Williams.

The project has been supported by World Design Capital Helsinki 2012, The Finnish Institute in London and British Council Finland.

Hello Ingo.

It all started in 2006 with Solutions 1-10: Umbauland (“Remodel Nation”), ten provokingly simple ideas which would see Germany work it out after all, including a new grammar, a new political party, and the Great Pyramid, the biggest building in the world which would serve as a democratic tomb for millions of people. At the moment, there are already five Solution books, and more to come.

How would you describe the series and its overall premise? Why the nation?

Because the nation is so weak. Basically, in the Solution series authors are asked to develop an abundance of compact and original ideas for countries and regions, contradicting the widely held assumption that, after the end of socialism, human advancement is only possible through technology or requires a yet-to-be-established world order.

“The Solution series contradicts the widely held assumption that human advancement is only possible through technology or requires a yet-to-be-established world order.”

Is authorship relevant to you in regards to the visions of Umbauland and Dubai Democracy?

I’m happy with just having the ideas, but they should have the potential to work. The books are like seeds. It’s more up to others to put them into the soil. And just as actual seeds, they can remain seeds for quite a while.

You’re not interested in personally pursuing their realisation through, for instance, political means?

I had the idea to take one of the ten visions in Umbauland, the first Solution book on Germany, and try to promote it myself. I chose The Great Pyramid – the idea of a mass tomb for potentially everyone – and did the project mainly in collaboration with an entrepreneur, Jens Thiel. We organised an architectural competition, produced a business plan, collaborated with an engineer who thought about how it could be realised, founded an association to support it, and got everything documented on film. We got immense media attention and caused a big debate in Germany, but it was difficult to take the next step. However, the project still exists.

In general, the more real the visions become the better. But my capacities are limited. I want to continue writing. How it usually works when proposing a vision for a country is that you become the face of the vision, having one key vision and sticking to it – promoting it for years and years. But this is boring for me.

Solution 186–195: Dubai Democracy by Ingo Niermann.

‘Strategic design’ and ‘design thinking’ have become buzzwords not only in business and industry but also on a governmental level. How would you place the Solution series on this map, and where do you think strategic design (or the Solution series) ends and politics begin?

‘Solution’ is a very common term in economics and there’s no problem with strategic design. But why not do these things completely independently? When you’re not necessarily dependent on the realisation of your ideas, it’s possible to choose a completely different rhetoric, a completely different language. Momus, for instance, wrote short stories on Scotland [see Jenna's interview with Momus]. And his forthcoming Japan book will be like a novel. Tirdad Zolghadr’s book about America is largely an autobiography.

Who are the authors of the books in addition to the ones on Germany and Dubai, which you wrote yourself?

They’re either friends or people who actually approached me. Momus got involved in The Great Pyramid project by performing at The Great Pyramid gala. He asked me if he could contribute, and I immediately said yes. I mean, I wouldn’t have dared to ask him myself.

What would you say is the role and meaning of being inside and looking out vs. outside and looking in in terms of writing about your own home country or other nations like China or Dubai in your case? Or maybe Scotland and Japan in Momus’ case.

Actually it doesn’t feel that much different – doing a book on Germany or one on Dubai. We had these discussions with one of the contributors, Tirdad Zolghadr, because a friend of mine wanted to do a book on Afghanistan and we wondered whether it would be neo-colonial if she as a German did that. But I think there should be no restrictions. Everything works. I mean, Momus did a book on Scotland. He is from Scotland, but almost never lived there. Still, there is a connection. Tirdad was also born in the US, but didn’t live there so long, except now when he returned to teach there. His approach was more about looking at the biggest, the still most powerful country in the world.

Ingo Niermann at home in Wedding, Berlin.

Going back to the question of genre. Is the boundary between fiction and non-fiction interesting or relevant to you?

I’m a novelist, although most of the books that I publish are non-fiction. But the possibilities of making things up or not making things up interest me. When you talk about the future, you don’t know where the boundary is. That’s a nice thing. Usually novelists write about things in the past. Or they write science fiction. However, my idea as a novelist creating the Solution series is that when you talk about the future it’s fiction per se.

“When you talk about the future, you don’t know where the boundary between fiction and non-fiction is.”

And how has your work with the Solution series been received? Has it been perceived as “real”?

There has been a lot of questioning in relation to my work. For instance, we went to a village which we had chosen as a possible place to build The Great Pyramid. Some people thought it was “Borat”. We were also given some funding for the project by the German Cultural Foundation, but they wanted us to ensure that we didn’t actually want the pyramid to become real. They liked the idea of keeping the piece in the framework of fiction and culture as they are not allowed to support real-estate ventures.

Which nations are next on the list?

There will be a book on Japan, The Book of Japans by Momus. Starting again from Scotland, on Shetland Islands, there’s a group of people who claim that they travelled to the future of Japan. They are twelve people, and they are called The Idiots. Now experts have to judge whether their prophecies on the future of Japan are realistic.

Then there’s another one, The United States of Palestine-Israel. It’s an anthology with 19 solutions written by many contributors and edited by Joshua Simon. It’s really interesting because the term ‘solution’ is very familiar in the context of Palestine and Israel. People always talk about the two-state solution, but it’s actually a guarantor of stagnation. And the book is all about opening up that discourse. It’s about questioning that solution and offering an abundance of new ones from creating a multitude of states to that one and only, coming up with a common myth for both Israelis and Palestinians. Some solutions evolve out of art projects and some from the perspective of politicians.

What else are you working at the moment?

At the moment, I’m working on a long essay titled Drill, which will include elements of fiction. It’s as much about my personal poetology, a way of understanding what I did so far and what keeps it together, as it is about the fundamental practice of contemporary people in general. It’s something that already happens, but I’m projecting it into the future. The Solution series is part of it, you’re part of it. I try not to do any less than understand the post post modern state – something that people do, but they just don’t know it yet. There’s all this opening up and crossing boundaries when you think of the last decades. And Drill could be the next step. It’s about limitations that you give yourself. It’s the freedom to restrict yourself. Radical performance art from the 70s has been of great inspiration to me when thinking about the Drill. In reverse, my concept of a Drill Palace inspired the performance artist Marina Abramović to “drill” her live audience.

Better Dreams, edited by Martti Kalliala and co-written with Jenna Sutela and Tuomas Toivonen will be published by Sternberg Press in 2011.

Home-work-home

Jenna: Our creative practice is as mobile as it can get. Having homes around the world, we sleep and work at each other’s places and on the way. When we get together, we usually work intensively, turning our homes into camps, talking, writing and putting on events. And we always cook. Living and working like this, it’s easy to relate to Merce Cunningham when he talked about his friend and collaborator Robert Rauschenberg: “When I met Bob, I felt less and less need for conversation. I felt what he felt.”

Anni: OK Do and life also mix in the sense that we collaborate mostly with friends – or that most of the collaborators eventually become our friends. And then we cook for them, too. Perhaps we unconsciously try to persuade people to work with OK Do through good food… Harriet Beecher Stowe said that “home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserve”. I think working on OK Do makes us happy because it allows us to be who we are and team up with people we admire and like.

“For the OK Talk brunches, we asked the guests to bring over a breakfast ingredient each so that we can cook together with them in the morning and sleep more during the night.”

Jenna: We usually take on slightly unrealistic cooking projects for our events, too – such as baking cakes in the middle of the night, in between a hundred other things. Learning from that, for the OK Talk brunch events in Helsinki and London, we asked the guests to bring over a breakfast ingredient each so that we can cook together with them in the morning and sleep more during the night.

Crossing disciplines

Anni: We’ve talked a lot about the concept of OK Do with each other and with others, in order to develop it further. And although we’re designers by background, we don’t want to get stuck in that world, or at least in the traditional ideas of design. The most important thing is to explore how we can contribute to creating better futures while thinking and doing things that fascinate us. We like art, science and music, engaging in dialogues as well as expressing ourselves.

Jenna: Having published our first book, Science Poems, in Paris in the summer, we recently also learned about the practicalities of independent publishing by running around the city, then Eurostar, and later the London underground with boxes of books. Not just writing, curating and cooking for the book party, we also took the role of a distributor in the project.

“One day we struggled with a text that looked at the poetics of quantum physics and the next we wondered how to get down the stairs in the metro with ninety books and a second-rate trolley.”

Anni: One day we struggled with a text that looked at the poetics of quantum physics and the next we wondered how to get down the stairs in the metro with ninety books and a second-rate trolley. We’re planning to issue a list of things that a small publisher needs to take into account when making a book. It was fun.

Jenna: And we met many interesting people – as well as some gentlemen who helped us to carry the boxes in the Paris metro.

Made in places

Anni: We’re interested in placemaking as well as how places shape us and OK Do. Travelling and seeing different things finally helps us see familiar things, like Finland, in a different way. While setting up an office in one place one day sounds attractive, it seems that, for now, we just need to keep moving.

“Travelling and seeing different things finally helps us see familiar things, like Finland, in a different way.”

Jenna: Sometimes, especially when travelling, it’s hard to distinguish between work and holiday. After Science Poems was published, I travelled on the Italian coast only to cook and swim for a week, and Anni took to Lapland. Living on an island with no internet, again, it was easy to turn food making into a project. This made me think about how not only cooking, but various kinds of mundane activities like changing or decorating one’s environment, or leaving it as it is, affect not only living but working, too. While in Italy, I read a story in 032c about the American artist Cy Twombly who made no distinction between interior decoration and art, but decorated with his paintings, just as he did with antiques. To him, a doorknob would present itself something as admirable as a painting – just as the contexts of Helsinki, Paris and London, an Italian summer house or camping in Lapland, play a significant role in whatever we do.

Anni: It was weird to have a phone discussion with Jenna about the name of the publication on young Finnish and Chinese architecture that was in process at the time, just after I had woken up from a night slept on the driver’s seat of the car. It had been too cold and windy to put up the tent in Nordkapp, the most Northern point of the continental Europe you can reach along a road. Deciding on the name, that ended up being Double Happy – (8+8=19) Views on Architecture in Finland and China, required a certain type of thinking for which I felt too far out in the periphery. I guess I had travelled there exactly for that.

“We collect bits and pieces from our environment and tie them together into an assemblage that is us.”

Jenna: Another thing I learned about Twombly was that living and working in Italy for a long time, he used white paint, his “marble”, to coat the sculptures or assemblages he made, as if to neutralise the heterogeneous effects of the diverse shapes and colours of objects they contained – making them Twombly. And I guess this is what we do, too, in our own way. Collect bits and pieces from our environment and tie them together into an entity that is us.

Anni: And then we take that entity into different places again. It will never be finished.

Originally published as part of Hirameki catalogue for a showcase of Finnish design in Japan, this article is also the third in a series of introspection on our activities as OK Do. For previous ideas, see Introspection is Boring – But what is OK Do? and How to Make a Design Think Tank.

To be honest with you, we aren’t experts in architecture, but really into it. Having been invited to collaborate with Newly Drawn, a group of young Finnish architects, we were taken by the opportunity to explore the topic from an outsider’s perspective, to interview interesting people in the field and dig deeper into our own surroundings as well as placemaking in China.

We started first by producing communications for Snowball architecture events organised as part of Finland’s cultural programme for the Shanghai World Expo, and ended up as editors of the Double Happy publication. Already in the beginning we came across the outlandish duplet: Finnish and Chinese architecture. “What could Finnish and Chinese architects learn from each other?”, we asked ourselves in the midst of trying to encourage Sino-Finnish architectural exchange.

Going to Shanghai in March 2010, we met with both Finnish and Chinese architects who told us about their projects and interests, providing answers to our questions. The discussions revolved around social and ecological issues and innovations, cultural differences and similarities, the potential for collaboration and increasingly crossing disciplines. The contrast between Finland, a small Nordic welfare state still dominated by a modernist stance on architecture, and China, a country undergoing rapid modernisation and thus pushing the boundaries of architectural design, proved to be big. While practitioners in Finland seem to long for a new air of dynamism and change similar to that of the post-war era, Chinese architects returning from their studies abroad are tackling the preservation and development of cultural identity in urbanising China.

For us, it felt natural to approach the topic of Finnish and Chinese architecture by investigating design processes rather than the end results. We set out to pinpoint areas that we found particularly important when it comes to improving life through architecture in Finland and China. Building inspiring and enjoyable cities with many layers and cultural variation as well as creating comfortable homes, work places and public spaces – and routes between them – are, in the end, objectives of architects in both countries. But while Finns know how to support privacy, the Chinese master communality. And while Chinese architects know how to tackle chaos and speed, their Finnish colleagues are experts in taking advantage of tranquility and empty space. These skills can be applied in both countries, even if the starting points and issues are completely different.

Double Happy includes stories that reflect some of the various facets of placemaking. Commissioned by Newly Drawn and head-edited by us, with writings and illustrations from a group of people invited to explore the topic, it draws a picture of Finnish and Chinese architectural environment today. Graphic design and art direction by Åh.

Contributors: Mathieu Borysevicz, Bryan Boyer, Christopher DeWolf, Che Fei 车飞, Pan Jian Feng 潘剑锋, Hanne Granberg, Hella Hernberg, Kaarle Hurtig, Martti Kalliala, Hertta Kiiski, Dylan Kwok, Katja Lindroos, Meri Louekari, Herman Mao, Song Min 宋敏, Bert de Muynck, Rami Niemi, Hans Park, Janne Teräsvirta, Tuomas Toivonen, Timo Tuomas, Valtteri Väkevä & Hu Yang 胡杨

囍 (‘double happy’) is a popular decorative design composed of two stylized characters 喜 (‘joy’ or ‘happiness’). There is a visual resemblance between 囍 and the two lucky digits ‘88’. In Chinese the word for number ‘eight’ (八) sounds similar to the word which means ‘prosper’ or ‘wealth’ (发).

An overview of OK Talk and HEL YES! pop-up restaurant.

Making Places

The first event brought together six creative practitioners – Åbäke, design practice; Nene Tsuboi, designer and artist; Sarah Ichioka, director of Architecture Foundation; Teemu Suviala, co-founder of Kokoro & Moi; Tuomas Toivonen, musician and co-founder of NOW for Architecture and Urbanism and Finn Williams, urban planner and founder of Common Office – as well as an audience of fifty people.

Using different disciplines and projects, as well as the cities of London and Helsinki, as starting points, the discussion focused on the creation, evolution and essence of places. The panelists, having experience in making places through graphic identities, public saunas, events or urban planning, talked about utopian ideas and practical solutions, participatory spatial practices as well as the role and significance of localism and globalism, or planning and spontaneity, in their activities.

The gathering was complemented by Antto Melasniemi’s mushroom brunch, and it also included the London launch of Tuomas Toivonen’s Urbanism in the House album that continued on a boat ride in the canal, and was celebrated by listening to the record in the Islington Tunnel.

Nene Tsuboi, Benjamin Reichen, Sarah Ichioka, Teemu Suviala, Tuomas Toivonen, Finn Williams and Jenna Sutela.

Anni Puolakka, Nene Tsuboi, Benjamin Reichen and Sarah Ichioka.

Tuomas Toivonen and Finn Williams.

Teemu Suviala, Sarah Ichioka and Nene Tsuboi.

Antto Melasniemi, the chef of HEL YES!, and breakfast.

Urbanism in the House by Tuomas Toivonen.

Strategies of Participation

On Thursday 23rd, five speakers – Céline Condorelli, architect and founder of Support Structures; Ulla-Maaria Engeström, founder of Thinglink; HyperMarketo, communication platform; Karen Mirza, artist and founder of no.w.here and Suvi Saloniemi, curator at Kunsthalle Helsinki – and a small audience came together for a discussion about Strategies of Participation. Using tools such as an off-schedule (inspired by Brutally Early Club) and a potluck breakfast to which all the OK Talk visitors brought their favourite ingredients, we aimed to create an intimate atmosphere for sharing thoughts about encounters, interactions and collaborations.

The discussion evolved around topics such as spatial, cultural, psychological and communicative support for participation, self-production, online markets and communities as well as the concept of ‘non-participation’. Looking at strategies of participation from the perspectives of art, interaction design as well as cultural production of events and exhibitions, we also talked about the meaning of institutions, alternative cultures and friends in participatory projects.

The potluck breakfast, coordinated and cooked together by Antto Melasniemi, ended up including everything from fried British portobellos to Finnish crispbread.

Céline Condorelli, Ulla-Maaria Engeström, Jerome Rigaud, Karen Mirza, Suvi Saloniemi, Anni Puolakka and Jenna Sutela.

Céline Condorelli and Ulla-Maaria Engeström.

Jerome Rigaud, Karen Mirza and Suvi Saloniemi.

A potluck breakfast.

Audience at the OK Talk on Strategies of Participation.

Borderlands

The third OK Talk London dealt with the borderlands between different disciplines and featured five speakers – Revital Cohen, designer; Martti Kalliala, architect and one half of Renaissance Man; Zak Kyes, graphic designer and founder of Z.A.K.; Max Lamb, designer and Aamu Song, designer and founder of Company – and a record-breaking audience of nearly one hundred people.

The discussion revolved around the blurring of boundaries between design, art and other fields with an emphasis on collaborative practices. It explored the role and characteristics of a designer in an increasingly interconnected world where the ambiguity of professional identity, often connected with varied locations, people and modes of practice, was, in many ways, seen as an asset. The panelists also looked at the idea of designers creating their own economies, the culturally varying ideas of the concept of design (in Chinese, the word for design literally means ‘dream-shaping’) as well as the relationships between architecture and music, or design and science.

A salmon and potato breakfast was served by the HEL YES! restaurant.

Revital Cohen, Martti Kalliala, Zak Kyes, Max Lamb and Aamu Song.

Revital Cohen, Martti Kalliala and Zak Kyes.

Max Lamb and Aamu Song.

OK Talk London tabloid and a salmon and potato breakfast by HEL YES!.

Audience at the OK Talk on Borderlands.

OK Do thanks all the OK Talk participants, it was good!

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.

According to Antto Melasniemi’s plan, instead of an entrance ticket, the participants were asked to bring a breakfast ingredient each. Tuula Pöyhönen’s home was a perfect backdrop for making breakfast and enjoying the discussion.

Taking a fresh view on spatial practice, the discussion looked at the creation, evolution and essence of places. Using Helsinki and London as starting points, it revolved freely around placemaking in relation to cities and citizens, planning and spontaneity, as well as infrastructure and spirit of spaces. It will be documented in a publication following the series of events in Helsinki and London.

Shohei Shigematsu and Nene Tsuboi

Hanna Harris, Amanda Levete, Shohei Shigematsu and Nene Tsuboi

Bryan Boyer

See you at OK Talk London on 18, 23 and 25 September at HEL YES!, Wenlock Road 1-3 as Part of London Design Festival! The OK Talk London tabloid will be out on Friday, 10 September.

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.

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 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.

A hill with a hole. "Paper architecture" by Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin from the book Brodsky & Utkin: The Complete Works (Princeton Architectural Press, 2003).

The backward world

Recently in Shanghai, I saw many people walking backwards on the street and in the parks. As it turns out, they were following the footsteps of a mythic Chinese immortal, who could do it faster than the eye could see. In China, in addition to healthy exercise, walking backwards is also considered akin to a karmic reverse, allowing the walker to correct mistakes and sins of the past. But what is the world like in reverse?

All the time in the world

The weekend never ends in Berlin. There is no financial or social pressure to practice the everyday, so the outgoing Berliners work together to make the city more enjoyable, distorting time and typical etiquettes. In Berlin, a night out can stretch over days, weeks, and even years. As quantum physicists would say, probability is all we ever know about when it will come to an end.

Dream world

Last year, I read The Book of Scotlands, in which Nick Currie aka Momus uses negative space, or Ma in Japanese culture, to discover what his native country of Scotland could  become through writing about everything except the place itself. Like the surrealists – or Soviet “Paper Architects” ignoring the boundaries of possibility and gravity in their 1980s designs – Momus recognises the omnipotence of the imagined. “Every lie creates a parallel world; the world in which it is true,” he says.

The text was published as part of physics studies for the Science Poems book.