Designpartners Gets Underway

One of the core programmes of Helsinki Design Week 2009, Designpartners captures the essence of the week: the main focus is on design processes. “We took a jump in the dark,” said Helsinki Design Week’s director Kari Korkman in his address to the audience at the opening of Designpartners on Tuesday, September 8th. His Designpartners 2009 is a series of events that explore the essence of design. Designpartners has moved from static to dynamic, from displaying objects to the processes that create the objects. The themes at Designpartners 2009 are partnering and joining forces for novel outcomes. .. A Hot Potatoes design challenge: Collective dress Designpartners 2009 culminates in the “Hot Potatoes” design challenges: three designer groups at a time are given a design task and six hours to come up with their answer to it. The task on the opening night was to design a “collective dress” by ending individuality, sponsored by Marimekko.  The Anteeksi design group from Helsinki came up with a fictional merger of Anteeksi and Marimekko, leading to the design of a new clothing factory. After all, all industrial clothing design and manufacturing processes are collective. The Ice Architects from Moscow started with the idea of a uniform as a collective dress and produced a uniform for the citizens of the world. Design group “We Work In a Fragile Material” from Sweden dressed themselves up in one huge gown for all three of them. They described the experience as a sauna. .. Ecological values brought to the fore Designpartners declares to recycle all trash from the event, and goes further: South African designer Heath Nash, specializing in turning recycled materials into design items, was on the floor on the opening night creating his “Other People’s Rubbish” lampshades from plastic juice containers. He also let the audience try their hands on the containers and come up with their own designs. Even fashion was green: the night kicked off with the fashion show EGOISTA – “Muheres LOHAS*” (LOHAS meaning lifestyle of health and sustainability). The show declared, “We believe in fashion that is beautiful and has a conscience.” The organizers focus on fashion created with ethical values.