February is at the door

WDC Helsinki 2012 Open Doors Weekend is a spectacle, manifestation, carnival! It is about the delights of design, triumphing over the winter, workshops and activities for people of all ages.

With these and many other words, Heli and I have encouraged participants of WDC Helsinki 2012 to join the Open Doors Weekend event: to open doors, to make all efforts and future projects visible.

Once we have together spelled out the beautiful compound word in Finnish (designpääkaupunkiviikonloppu), it is time to start spelling out the projects: Redesigning 925, Frozen Lights, 365 Wellbeing, ADDLAB, CleanDesign Center, Käkäte.

“Excuse me?” our families, friends, acquaintances and editors ask – and we try to explain.

As we are typing this message, WDC Helsinki 2012 Director Pekka Timonen is giving a telephone interview. It is easy to eavesdrop, balancing on the bar stool of the  office kitchen. And this is what Pekka is saying: “It is about the way that the role of design has changed and all the many ways that it shows around us. We work hard within public services, these are important facets for all Finnish people. There is a need to stimulate discussion on design, yet a huge amount of work has to be done before we can move on from assessment of the chair to talking about the meaning of design.”

In the office kitchen, I can sit on a well designed chair and eat from a beautiful plate. For a while, life feels aesthetically successful. However, this is not what it is all about – we have to be awakened to see other things as well: How could my own grandmother's environment at the hospital be improved or how could she learn to use modern technology? How to use innovation of Finnish companies to reduce poverty in the developing countries? How do we calculate our water footprint in a world where the need for water in 20 years’ time will be 40% higher? Not to mention vases, luminaires and new fabrics in trams, those small things that make life more pleasant.

For this reason, we are planning a specific open weekend for design. We simply wish to include everyone: either to make visible or to view and participate.

Please join us to see what is happening behind the scenes, please comment, ask questions, express wonder. Will we learn to speak about the virtual rubbish dump as design in our everyday speech? And will we be able to have the Rocking Chair Get-Together events at airports to make people happy? Will the Marikylä Market Shop find its way to other areas of the globe? What will an ice lantern installation on Senate Square look like on a Saturday evening in February? The Hooray for Helsinki! book reading aunts and uncles are also part of the design year.

Apart from being a long compound word, designpääkaupunkiviikonloppu (WDC Helsinki 2012 Open Doors Weekend) is also an impressive weekend event full of carnival joy, revolution of design – is it also possible to design the political voice? – cheekiness and conventions. It travels by train, tram and bicycle. Its content can be experienced in a tent, art nouveau hall or a disco. Furthermore, it is also about contents that are difficult to unravel and that will make all of our daily lives richer – and our task, together with the designers, is to open that package which is wrapped in a design vocabulary, not only for ourselves but also and above all else, for you. Keep up with Anna and Heli – February is at the door!