Out and about in Helsinki

"The dream of Helsinki was born in around 1550, when the Swedish King Gustav Vasa was inspired to found a city on the Gulf of FInland's northern coast to in order to catch up with Russia's expansion of the Baltic trade routes. 
In 1808, during the Russian occupation, the entire place was levelled by fire. Plans for the city's reconstruction only began in 1817, but the city would have been nothing without the ideas and inspiration of Carl Ludwig Engel. Engel based his city planning directly on St Petersburg, and with materials no more eminent than brick and wood he built a capital that was remarkably Hellenic in feel. 
Towards the end of the nineteenth centaur, vast swathes of the city were rebuilt and expanded in forward looking Art Nouveau and Jungend styles. Later, the influence of national romanticism was made manifest by a trio of locally born architects - Herman Gesellius, Armas Lindgren and Elliel Saarinen, whose approach formed the basis of the work of the mastermind designer Alvar Aalto. Alto of course brought worldwide fame to Finland through his architecture, in addition to a small number of memorable building to Helsinki. More importantly, he moved a generation of (or three) of architects to to look in their backyards for inspiration, seeking construction based around organic forms and utilising natural materials - ideas which have brought Helsinki well into the modern world."

The Rough Guide to Finland

 

Flow Festival 2013

We spent one day at Flow Festival this year, our first ever visit but the tenth time this festival has taken place. Flow Festival is quite under the radar in the UK (though that may change as Outpost Media has been appointed for next year). We only heard about it through trying to find a place to see Kraftwerk 3D after their shows at the Tate Modern sold out earlier in the year. I feel like we discovered a hidden treasure. Even though we were only there for one day, Flow turned out to be festival gold. Not too crowded, great line up, lots of arty activities in case you get tired of music and great food.

As we were daytrippers, our Flow experience was pretty compact. We stuck with our ‘priority’ acts – Public Enemy and Kraftwerk – and ddin’t see a lot else except Grimes, who played some new stuff which sounded very 90s/ St Etienne (in the best possible way). However, the line-up across the whole weekend was fantastic, with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, My Bloody Valentine and The Knife’s Shaking The Habitual Show.

The Kraftwerk show was everything we wanted. We danced a lot. The 3D was actually quite impressive. At one point the guy in front of me ducked as a huge satellite flew out of the screen to impale him.

Importantly, Flow also has great merch. I was a big fan of this peach and blue tote bag, but there was also a specially designed line from R/H.

The visual identity of Flow is better than any festival I've been to, with really lickable graphics and colours everywhere and hardly any sponsor branding to make things look ugly. Even, Nokia, the main sponsor, just put the word 'Lumia' a couple of places (see my photo of their bar below) rather than throw their logo in.

The Flow branding was done by Finnish design agency Tsto and their site has some beautiful case studies that are well worth a look.

Views from Flow Festival

This is Flow by Cocoa from FLOW FESTIVAL on Vimeo.

Read Drowned in Sound's great review of Flow Festival here.

Visiting Marimekko in Helsinki

Marimekko has always been one of my big design crushes. So I got very excited when I managed to snatch a visit to their flagship store in Helsinki last weekend. My credit card hurts.

Some of the classic patterns at Marimekko are so bold and simple, it is hard to believe that the company got started as early as 1951. Marimekko was actually set up purely to showcase the prints of the textile company Printex, set up by Viljo and Armi Ratia. Armi decided that the key to success was to make textiles in designs that were entirely different to the depressing post war florals already on the market . She hired Maija Isola to dream up the patterns. The problem was that while Printex's designs got attention, no one knew how to use them. Enter Marimekko.

Printex went bust by 1953, but Marimekko soldiered on through the hard times; the company could only afford to buy it's own sewing machines in 1955. After wowing exporters at the World's Fair in Brussels in 1958, the company got an international big break when Jackie Kennedy bought seven Marimekko dresses at the D/R store in Cape Cod.

[Marimekko facts from Scandinavian Design by Charlotte Fiell]