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.

Oivallus report 1: "New ideas originate in the boundaries of different fields. In the future, challenges will be solved in learning networks."

The goal of Oivallus is to make governmental decision-making in education policies meet the future needs of Finnish industries. What will working life be like in the 2020s? What kinds of knowledge and skills will the labor market and entrepreneurship require? The project seeks to explore and outline progressive operating and learning environments.

Oivallus report 1:

“If you are not in real time, you’re dead.” –Kevin Kelly

Waves of development, such as globalisation, climate change, the growing complexity and dynamics of systems, as well as changes in life values shape our operating environment – how we work, what companies do, what industries produce, and what sort of housing and urban conditions we live in.

The first Oivallus report asserts, for example, that in the future work will require more creativity and interdisciplinary thinking and doing, the motivation behind entrepreneurship will lie in a purposeful life instead of mere profit, the collaboration between different generations will become closer, and the public sector will increasingly develop services together with citizens and companies.

“You are what you share.” –Charles Leadbeater

In many areas, the future remains a mystery. However, one trend is clear: we will respond to the waves of development by networking with and learning from a range of experts and actors in different fields. These systems of interconnected people and organisations are known as learning networks.

“Anticipating the future is not about guessing, but about creating it.” –Oivallus

Oivallus report 1: Currently forest industry provides around one third of the net export revenues of Finland (The Finnish Forest Industries Federation, 2009). What will forest (www.upmforestlife.com) mean to Finland in the future?

Oivallus report 1: "What is Oivallus ('a sudden insight' in Finnish)?" – A project exploring the future of education in a networked economy.

Oivallus report 1: "A new target or method of use is as good an innovation as a completely new one." Experimental cooking mechanisms and mixes of ingredients make the cornerstone of the molecular kitchen at restaurant Luomo in Helsinki.

Oivallus report 2

While the first part of the Oivallus project looked at future operating and learning environments, the next one focuses on the competence needs of businesses.

“Future working life allows different ways for reaching the desired end results.” –Oivallus

The needed proficiencies will be different in the future because the ways of working are changing. Jobs are becoming less and less routine, and increasingly few of them can be done ‘by the book’. The future working life resembles film making: work is done on a project basis in collaboration with various contributors. There is also a tendency of tasks becoming more variable.

“All business will be ‘green’ business.” –Oivallus

In order to succeed, industries need to acquire environmental, technology, business and service competencies. It is also becoming increasingly important to focus on user experiences.

“The right conditions enable groups and their members to shine.” –Oivallus

Network skills and the ability to obtain, utilise and share knowledge lay the foundations of future work. At best, a learning network can use its extended knowledge-base to identify new opportunities and find solutions for contemporary challenges – the key is to work together with people of different backgrounds and capabilities. Learning from one another and building on existing ideas are skills that require practicing. These competences should be developed from early on and throughout education.

Oivallus report 2: "Skill synergies arise in groups. Future education will support working together."

Oivallus report 2: "What will we need to know or learn?"

The third and final stage of the Oivallus project will dig deeper into what kind of education will prepare people for work in the 2020s. The concluding report is to be published in May 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.

The near-collapse of our financial system has had tremendous effects on the architectural profession. The number of unemployed architects worldwide is higher than ever before. This, combined with the fragmentation of the building process into the hands of specialist consultants and the shift from architects being in the service of public to private capital, has made a lot of the work and responsibilities that traditionally belonged to them simply disappear or move to other professional domains. This is why newly graduated architects have difficulties finding jobs that match their education, creative ability or ambition – not to mention the thousands of students facing an increasingly uncertain future.

It is clear that new professional models are needed to accompany that of the architect as we have learned to know her. A degree in architecture is rarely considered a generalist education in the sense that one in law or economics is. Why should it be – if one thinks of ‘architecture’ merely as the art of designing buildings (a noble art as it is). However, if it is allowed to encompass its full potential and considered the art of dealing with contradictory problems and breaking down multidimensional and complex agendas into understandable, readable, liveable and functional concepts, designs and strategies, it opens up a whole new vista of professional opportunity. From the United Nations to curatorial practices, from rethinking organisational models to bringing a pronounced spatial expertise to politics, architects can challenge and add value to existing institutional, economic, social and governmental frameworks.

Martti Kalliala is an independent architect and musician who is currently touring the world with his electronic music project Renaissance Man. He has worked with, amongst others, NOW for Architecture and Urbanism and OMA. Kalliala is also currently editing a publication on better dreams for Finland.

Hans Park is an architect specialising in urban design and research. He currently works in Tokyo for Nihon Sekkei International, and has previous work experience in Nairobi, Seoul and Helsinki.

Here and there – Satoko and Kok-Meng's office mixes inside and outside spaces.

Thanks for inviting us over! How did you end up in Shanghai?

Satoko Saeki: I first came to China in 2000 for an internship, as a result of studying architecture under the guidance of a Chinese professor in Pennsylvania. Having lived in Tokyo and New York, I immediately felt that China was different. I was not interested in its architectural scene but more the atmosphere. Instead of being established and “ready”, there was an air of dynamism and potential – something was about to happen.

Kok-Meng Tan: I came in the end of 2003 to work on a large conservation project in the former French Concession. Then I met Satoko in a café where we both used to hang out. She had started her own practice a little earlier and asked me to join her.

Which café was that?

SS: It was a small casual café called Le Petite, run by our Japanese friend Noriko. Since then, she has made the place more private and moved it to her home. She used to work as a designer for Muji and has lived in Shanghai for many years. I can call Noriko if you would like to visit her.

We would, thanks (see the interview with Noriko)! Could you tell us about your design approach?

KMT: We are not interested in the kind of design that is currently hyped all over. We rather believe in the genres of “under design” (design that falls below conventional contemporary design as deemed too simple or too banal) “super design” (design that exceeds the conventional because it may be too extreme, too personal or just useless) and “non-design” (functional and straightforward items and ideas that were developed before the advent of “design”).

SS: We are also interested in creating experiences and affecting behaviour in spaces instead of designing expressive buildings.

“We believe in the genres of under design, super design and non-design.”

What kinds of projects do you carry out?

SS: We mainly do interiors and small-scale architecture because, as foreigners, it’s difficult for us to get hold of bigger development projects.

KMT: Lately, we’ve been working on a small housing project for two families based on the ideas of sharing and interconnection.

SS: The project is called Minus K House. In Japan, homes are often described as 3LDK (3 x Living Dining Kitchen rooms) or 4LDK, etc. But for these two houses, the kitchen is shared, and therefore not fully a K. In practice, all the 19 rooms of 3 x 3 square metres also function as passages: to move around the building, you need to pass from one room to another, and there are many ways to experience the house. One of the families uses their part of the building as a weekend house and the other part is used as a regular home. The openness allows each family to be aware of the other.

KMT: In the Minus K House, we also wanted to mix inside and outside spaces – to make the whole concept of ‘inside and outside’ insignificant so that the relationships between this and that, and here and there would become more important. When this happens, the walls become less important, even unnoticed, emphasising a communality in the space.

KUU is working on interiors and small-scale architecture for sharing and interconnection.

We definitely feel that Chinese culture is more inclined to sharing than our own. Could you tell us more about your view on the concept of sharing in Chinese architecture?

SS: After the Communist Liberation in 1949, families typically had to share their bathrooms and kitchens with others. This was not very convenient but people got used to it. Nowadays, Chinese people are wealthier, but through urbanisation, like in most of the other big cities, people have to move to tower blocks which diminish communality. We wish to bring the concept of sharing back to Chinese architecture, but in a more comfortable way than before.

KMT: We think that sharing, or the presence and recognition of somebody else, makes people more in touch with reality. In our office, a partially roofless space built in the 1930s for residential use, we can smell the cooking of our neighbours, see their underwear drying, and hear them chatting. We really like the setting because it reminds us that we are working in a real context, mixing the inside and outside spaces together.

“We wish to bring the concept of sharing back to Chinese architecture, but in a more comfortable way than before.”

How do you find clients and collaborators?

KMT: In China, everything happens through the people you know. Satoko just visited a really nice indigo dyeing workshop outside Shanghai which we found through Noriko.

SS: It’s a workshop run by a 75-year-old couple who use natural indigo and cotton and dye everything by hand. In fact, China is a great place for a designer exactly because of this: the craftsmen and manufacturers are near and it’s possible to work with them closely.

KMT: Basically, you can just make a drawing and take it to the product-makers yourself. In Japan and Singapore, we usually use catalogues for picking up construction material for our projects while in China we can work in close collaboration with the makers themselves.

You’ve also taught at the Shenzhen University’s architecture department as guest studio masters.

KMT: Yes, last year, we carried out a design studio called Shenzhen Super Stir with our students who were encouraged to give modern architecture a proper stir through a series of exercises. We asked them to rethink the idea of “clarity” – a common architectural notion that has been inherited from the early European modernists. The idea was to ask if an estrangement from clarity or definition could inspire us to new thinking about privacy, communality and boundaries – and ultimately to new kind of architecture.

What did the students think about the stirring?

KMT: The students seemed resistant at first, they wanted to make new things. In China, traditionally, students are taught to create form – and if the project doesn’t involve creating new form then the results are not considered new. We wanted to make the students see the value in designing new experiences, too.

SS: We also wanted them to experiment how cities might become interesting and more functional through the “misuse” of space. In the end, the students came up with great ideas for an old industrial block where spaces with different functions, such as education or trade, overlapped encouraging sharing and interaction.

Like you’ve discussed in your writing, in the West, people are also obsessed with new forms.

KMT: Yes, according to François Jullien, a French Sinologist (The Great Image Has No Form, or On the Nonobject through Painting), this has to do with the foundations of Western, in other words Greek, thinking where something conceptual or abstract always has to be manifested as something else – a presence of “this” means the existence of “that”. In traditional non-Greek thinking, such as the Chinese, there is no obsession with presence. Whether something is present or not is never asked, because it’s not part of the question. Presence and non-presence, form and formlessness, good and bad, past and present, big and small, you and me, and here and there all exist in the same dynamic continuum. According to the non-Greek logic, we shouldn’t even ask questions about form or non-form – it’s not about one or the other but they come from the same pre-differentiated source.

“In traditional Chinese thinking, presence and non-presence, form and formlessness, good and bad, past and present, big and small, you and me, and here and there all exist in the same dynamic continuum.”

How do you see the current mindset of creative professionals in China?

KMT: When we first came to China, there was understandably no layers – no historical thinking or understanding behind architecture and design. The work and discussions were either stuck in Chinese traditions or random references picked from the Western world – and these ideas carried no meaning, they were not progressive. But then things started to change rapidly.

SS: In the last ten years, big money entered China and there was a lot of development, a lot of big projects. But at the same time, more subtle cultural things developed, too. Chinese people started opening cafés with unique local character. Before, people always referred to foreign examples, but the younger generation has gained confidence – they look at their own culture, society and roots and take ideas from them to the modern context.

KMT: I think that many Chinese creative people feel like they don’t need to live in the West anymore. They’re making meaningful things in their own context and recognising their own environment as authentic. This is great because, in the end, people want real things. The fact that people are starting to be their own selves in China is a good starting point for newness.

Kok-Meng and Satoko's office is a partially roofless space built in the 1930s for residential use.

We agree, and it is interesting to see how many contrasting ways of living and working seem to co-exist, for instance, in Shanghai. It’s not so settled yet.

SS: Yes, many people live in a modern way familiar from Western contexts while many neighbourhoods also hold on to the old spirit of sharing and porosity.

KMT: We’re attentive to the behaviour of people in Shanghai – how they behave in different environments, at different times and with different types of people. Things are in a fuzzy and seemingly contradictory state. For example, Shanghainese interact with their family, colleagues, and shopkeepers in a very natural way, but at the same time they formalise their homes into abstract symbols of social status and taste. Our young clients don’t cook, but they still want a designer kitchen. They will move out in three years time, yet they worry about radiation from the marble. We need to understand this phenomenon in order to work with it.

Could you name some other things that interest or inspire you about China at the moment?

SS: Well, we’re interested in traditional Chinese landscape painting: how the use of ink on paper, a single simple medium, can create a world of many things based on gradations of tonalities, densities, dryness and wetness, becoming present and fading away, hazy and distinct, here and there, this and that. In the paintings, we can sense an atmosphere of an all encompassing world before things became differentiated.

Noriko in her home and Le Petit Xiaoxiao café and shop.

Originally from Tokyo, Noriko, 42, has lived in Shanghai for 7 years. She first visited the city through her work for Muji, where she designed interior products and dealt with many Chinese manufacturers. “I have always been interested in production,” Noriko tells us. “The Shanghai area is special as there are many small factories here. I came to China because I wanted to learn the language and get to know the local producers and their thoughts.”

“I came to China because I wanted to learn the language and get to know the local producers and their thoughts.”

Noriko explains that she felt as if she was going back to her own roots when she moved from Japan to China. “Many cultural traditions in Japan actually come from here,” she notes. “I was also intrigued by the fact that Shanghai was so chaotic, so unfinished, and much more aggressive than Tokyo. You know, life easily gets shallow if everything is just beautiful. Here, it’s harder, but more interesting. However, Shanghai is starting to get more organised now, and people are getting more gentle. The city is developing, and maybe becoming less exciting than before, too.”

Noriko’s house is small and white. Built in 1948, it consists of two rooms – a bedroom and a living room where we sit drinking tea from cups hand-made by the host herself. The same cups are sold in Noriko’s home shop: a shelf of items from pottery to woodwork and textiles, most of which are designed by her and made by Chinese artisans – just like almost all the furniture in her house, too. Moreover, the shop selection includes some traditional Chinese everyday objects Noriko has found in random street shops around the city – beautiful and practical things that are often underestimated, and thus hard to find, in the globalising city.

Le Petit Xiaoxiao features ceramics crafted by Noriko and other products designed by her and made by local artisans.

“I’m very interested in primitive design and production methods,” Noriko explains her interest towards Chinese crafts. “In my own work, I try to combine traditional methods with new design.” One of her projects, factory-tshirt.net, sets out to create an online platform for designers and manufacturers to collaborate and learn about different design and production methods through the medium of a classic white t-shirt. On the website, Noriko presents her own T-shirt project involving indigo dying in a farmhouse in Zhoucheng, Yunnan and printing with plaster and soya in Tongxiang, Zhejiang. “It’s nice to know about things,” Noriko says.

The garden in front of Noriko's place is taken care of by her together with her neighbours.

In addition to more traditional crafts, Noriko is also interested in web design and programming. “I don’t like to distinguish between different fields of creative work – people are more complex than that,” she notes. Working at home and for herself, she also likes to experiment with the boundaries between labour and leisure. “I hate the office,” she says. “It’s the most uncreative place in the world.”

“I hate the office. It’s the most uncreative place in the world.”

Like us, many people found their way to Noriko’s through a friend’s recommendation. We heard about the place from Satoko and Kok-Meng, a Shanghai-based couple who met each other at Le Petit Xiaoxiao and later founded KUU design office together. “I wanted to create a small creative community by making my home a meeting place,” Noriko tells us about her activities resonating Chinese communality. “I have made many new friends at my place.”

Work and leisure in Viiskulma, Helsinki.

The demographic divisions of past eras have evolved into divisions in time, a schedule: periods in life – short or long – when we assume different roles. The industrial revolution set the base for mass consumer society, and formulated the ingenious equation: a week’s labour equals a weekend as a consumer, a free man. Here, money earned in servitude translates into different kinds of freedoms, securities and commodities – waypoints in a pursuit of happiness and a meaningful life.

Tuula Pöyhönen caught by the ONNI shop's security camera.

What made you take your work home in the first place?

It felt ridiculous to keep the flat empty the whole day and rent a space for a shop where I couldn’t work on my products. This way, I can combine design work and shop-keeping just like the clothiers, shoemakers and other similar professionals did in the olden times. Also, it makes integrating family and work life easier.

Are there any downsides?

Sometimes it feels like a burden to have the laundry and other homework around. But I like to take care of that business during the day. When my children come home from the nursery, I want to spend time with them.

Tuula's son Mosse in his workshop. Photo by Tuula Pöyhönen.

ONNI is open by appointment or whenever you’re at home, and you have also lent the space for other purposes (like the OK Do launch party). Does it ever feel uncomfortable that your home is open to the public?

I don’t think about it that much. In addition to the shop, the apartment has been used for photo and film shoots, and if I take on design commissions, I often invite the clients over. My husband doesn’t mind either. Sometimes I’m wondering if it’s dumb to open your home and life, but then again, I haven’t got anything to hide. If a visitor gets uneasy to enter a space that is my home, it’s not really my problem. Once, as a student, I made a performance with my friend wearing our designs in a shop display window. I noticed that rather than feeling uncomfortable myself, many passersby felt uneasy about the fact that they were watching. For me, it has always been easier to invite people to my place and give rather than go to others’ and receive.

“If a visitor gets uneasy to enter a space that is my home, it’s not really my problem.”

What are the best things about having an open home?

As a creative professional, if you’re going to meet new clients, it might be difficult to convey your views and sense of style in an office meeting. I prefer to invite them over in order to show them the atmosphere of my home. It conveys what I’m like and how I work; the mentality that underpins my design. In my opinion, it’s nonsense to claim that a design professional is someone who is able to adopt to different clients’ wishes. I think that clients should go to designers who are on the same wavelength to begin with.

Do you think that it’s significant for the ONNI customers to see where the products come from?

I haven’t started the home shop in order to blazon that instead of child labour ONNI products are home-made. However, I’m personally fascinated by disclosed processes. I like how, in his new book The Interior World of Tom Dixon, designer Tom Dixon reveals his production methods, the materials he uses and what makes him inspired, instead of just displaying a polished end result.

Work on the dining table.

One designer I asked to interview refused because he thought that by revealing how small his home studio is, the brand would suffer. For you, it’s quite the opposite, I guess.

Yes, I don’t feel the need to hide the scale of my business. But perhaps some companies want to appear big because they believe that people want to buy success, that people wish to be part of something bigger. At the moment I’m hoping to grow my company, too – I wish to employ a sewer.

Does working at home set limits to collaboration?

In my case, collaboration is close; people come to my place and we barter. I sew curtains for my photographer and I’m also lucky to have a graphic designer as a husband. Despite working at home, I don’t want to isolate but work with other professionals.

“In my case, collaboration is close; people come to my place and we barter.”

I think people’s homes are some of the most inspiring places one can find. How does your home shape your work?

I have two sons (3,5- and 6-year-olds) and especially when they spent the days at home I had to choose techniques that allowed me to work in short spans. There was no way I could have made patterns, cut or sewn, so I started knitting products with thread. I’m also really inspired by the woodwork of my older son. Having started with making toys two years ago, he is now exploring how pieces of wood can create a space when nailed together. And without him, ONNI shop wouldn’t have its wooden security camera.

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?

Ines Kaag + Desiree Heiss = BLESS. Illustration by Manuel Raeder.

Dear Ines and Desiree,

We see your work as something in between art and fashion design. What do you think about this description and how do you see your position in the fields of fashion and art?

I & D: Honestly, we don’t think in categories. We simply do what we do and everybody is free to interpret and categorise it. In general, we see our work as creation of everyday products that are made to be used. However, art projects are welcome since they allow a certain freedom, budget and time to create new products that we wouldn’t have been able to develop otherwise.

BLESS seems to us as something very unconditional, and something genuinely based on personal interest. What is the motivation behind your work?

I & D: To earn our living in doing something we like to do and that makes us advance continuously on another, human level.

How did you get together in the first place?

I & D: We met in Paris in 1993 through a fashion competition and later started a penfriendship. After having visited each other for our graduation shows, we became close friends and started to discuss each other’s work as well as work on small projects together. We slowly slided into a more serious ground when Martin Margiela discovered our fur wig advertisement in i-D magazine and hired us to make wigs for his show.

How big is the company altogether and how do you share the tasks between the two of you? How does it work to do creative things together?

I & D: We have worked in two different cities, Berlin and Paris from the very beginning. In both cities, we have one fixed and one freelance employee, plus in Berlin a person that takes care of the shop. We share all the tasks between the two of us. Our creative work is like a hobby somewhere between the lines of hundreds of administrative emails.

“Our creative work is like a hobby somewhere between the lines of hundreds of administrative emails.”

Could you tell us more about your design process?

I & D: There are no fixed rules or schemes in terms of how we work. Everything is imaginable – it just occurs. Sometimes we develop the ideas 100% together, sometimes 100% separate. At times, one person starts and the other one ends, one person comes up with an idea and the other one makes the prototype, or one person makes something and the other person destroys it. Our tools are mainly words and hands. We never draw.

What are your studios in Paris and Berlin like?

I & D: Both are quite special, somehow like private houses, quite green and charming.

BLESS shop Paris, 14 Rue Portefoin. Photo by BLESS.

BLESS shop Berlin, Mulackstraße 38. Photo by BLESS.

What do you feel are the differences in working in Paris vs. Berlin? Is it difficult to work from two cities?

I & D: The secret is that it´s not Berlin “vs.” Paris, but “together with”. We never actually ended up working in different places but the other way around: we started working like this and haven’t stopped so far. It’s like a long distance romance – it has its pros and cons like any other form of being together. The main advantage is that we remain our own bosses, free to work in our own personal way in each city. The cons are the additional costs and loss of time through internal administration and communication. However, we do meet up at least every ten days in Berlin, Paris or elsewhere.

“Working in two different cities is like a long distance romance.”

Are there any special charateristics of Paris and Berlin that affect your thinking and doing? And how?

D: Living in a capital means that you can get really everything you need. I like that, as well as the light in Paris.
I: I have no reason to move. The sensation of comfort keeps me in Berlin. I have no idea whether it’s the city itself or its trees – and it wouldn’t make any difference.

Despite the fact that you work far from each other you are one as BLESS, always presenting your work together in public. Is this something you make a point of because you are dispersed in different places – taking care of your public presence together?

I & D: You guessed it right. Since we are often apart, it is important that BLESS is clearly a unit. It wouldn’t exist without the both of us: the products, the structure and the vision are a dialogue rather than a master plan.

You’re very mysterious when it comes to your identity and keep your private lives, and even working life, to yourself. We feel that it’s very interesting, especially now that people are sharing more and more in public in general. Why did you decide to do this?

I & D: We are not at all interested in sharing our personal life with the public. Instead, we are very happy to share our products that are made to be shared.

Like your working habits your work itself is also very futuristic. How do you see the future?

I & D: Playful.

Thanks!

I & D: Thank you!