Helsinki Design Week to focus on storytelling
Helsinki Design Week is an annual city-wide event encompassing design, architecture and fashion. It offers visitors exhibitions, seminars, workshops, fashion shows, shopping experiences and open houses.
This year’s Helsinki Design Week invites both design professionals and the general public to a series of events centering around the theme of storytelling, telling the best stories behind design processes.
Helsinki Design Week has an increasingly international approach. The Week is building a network of international design events, and the first partner, featured in 2010, is Dutch Design Week. Another aspect of the international approach is collaboration with the Nordic Fashion Association, which is made up of fashion industry bodies from the Nordic countries.
The 2010 programme builds upon a Past-Present-Future timeline. The week will be launched with the inauguration of an architectural interpretation of the Finnish national epic Kalevala, a structure designed and built on the Seurasaari island in Helsinki by an international team of architecture students.
The 2010 programme items include a Designpartners100 exhibition, which will present an overview of new design at the Helsinki Exhibition and Convention Centre in conjunction with the Habitare 2010 design trade fair. Display windows of Helsinki businesses and galleries will become playgrounds for designers and artists. OpenHouseHelsinki will offer tours to some of the most interesting buildings, spaces and neighbourhoods of the city. Open Studios will offer people in Helsinki opportunities to visit design studios and get a glimpse of the life of the city’s creative professionals.
The Kaapelitehdas (Cable Factory) cultural centre will set the stage for fashion, Nordic design and shopping: the Nordic Night will present a programme of fashion, music and displays, and the Design Market will put on sale a variety of design products. As in earlier years, there will be a PechaKuchaNight focusing on design. There will also be an exhibition and fashion show of work by self-taught fashion designers. Helsinki Design Week 2010 also extends an open invitation to members of the public, organizations and businesses to organize programmes.
