Green values and emotional experiences evoked by objects – young designers show what the face of Finnish design will look like in the coming years
Here they are, the four emerging designers of Habitare’s Talentshop exhibition in 2023: Laura Meriluoto, Didi NG Wing Yin, Melissa Sammalvaara and Antti Tuomi. These designers of a new generation show the way forward for Finnish design in the coming years. Each designer will have their own stand at which to present themselves at Habitare at the Helsinki Expo and Convention Centre (Messukeskus) from 13 to 17 September 2023.
To be held for the seventh time, Habitare’s Talentshop highlights designers who are in the early stages of their career, but who have found their own personal style and designer identity to differentiate themselves from others.
“The four selected emerging talents represent a wide range of fields in design: traditional product design, the design and manufacture of unique art objects, productisation management, conceptual thinking, and insightful use of craft techniques. They provided a high-quality demonstration of their skills and a strong, personal style”, say Elina Aalto and Saara Renvall of Imu Design, who produce and curate the Talentshop exhibition.
According to Aalto and Renvall, what links the designers is their support for green values, and this is reflected in various interesting ways in their work and design philosophies: Didi NG Wing Yin’s work highlights the unique materiality and properties of wood. Melissa Sammalvaara draws inspiration from mosses and nature, and uses recycled yarns as material. Antti Tuomi works from the principles of minimising the use of materials and creating products that can be easily assembled and disassembled for transport or storage. Laura Meriluoto’s work is guided by the idea of establishing an attachment relationship between the designed object and the person using it. This affects how the person treats and cherishes the object, which increases its life cycle.
In addition to Aalto and Renvall, the Talentshop jury included the creative director of Habitare Laura Sarvilinna and the designer Hanna Anonen, who was featured in Habitare’s Talentshop in 2015 and Protoshop in 2013 and 2016.
The designers to be featured at Habitare’s Talenshop are
Laura Meriluoto
Laura Meriluoto, an Aalto University graduate, is a multi-talented designer based in Helsinki. Laura’s work focuses on the emotional experiences evoked by objects, as well as people’s attachment to objects and the reinforcement of this through design. In her work, she explores and examines methods that go deeper, beyond material properties, to help extend the life cycle of products. Laura believes that a product that is sympathetic, engaging, or personal will make the user cherish it, take care of it, and, if necessary, repair it. The recurring themes in Laura’s works, which straddle the borderline between artworks and everyday objects, are adaptability, the traces left by time, and the human features and imperfections in objects. Currently, Laura works as a creative director and a freelance designer, and her work has been presented internationally, for example, in Stockholm, Bern and Milan. Through the objects she designs, Laura aims to awaken people to re-examine their own consumption habits and to encourage a dialogue about the many dimensions of sustainability.
Didi NG Wing Yin
Didi NG Wing Yin (b. 1989) is a Hong Kong Born artist-designer based in Helsinki. Upon completing a Bachelor of Arts in Industrial Design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2012, he went on to work in the furniture- and interior design industry. He is currently attending the MA in Interior Architecture at Aalto University, Finland, where his practice has shifted toward woodworking in the fields of contemporary design and crafts. In his practice, Didi seeks to expand perspectives on wood crafting and highlight wood's natural materiality through experimental surface treatments and hand-carving techniques. His dedication to wood crafting over the past years has resulted in small- and large-scale works situated in a space between sculpture, installation, and furniture.
Melissa Sammalvaara
Melissa Sammalvaara is an adventure-loving artist working in Helsinki and around various campfires. She creates modern rya rugs, which are inspired by nature and moss, and which explore spatiality and the relationship of the modern human with nature using different surfaces, materials and techniques. Her hand-made rya rugs are luscious and moss-like, and they come in a variety of shapes: they grow on walls in organic clusters and gently but purposefully spread out in thread-like formations. The rya rugs are handmade by weaving, tufting, knitting, and knotting, and as with traditional rugs, it is a very slow and careful process. Sammalvaara graduated as a textile artist from Aalto University in 2019, since when she has worked full-time as a freelance artist. Sammalvaara’s works are featured, for example, at the Finnish Institute in France and in the State Art Deposit Collection and the Tuomas Sopanen Collection. The Sammalvaara works included in the Tuomas Sopanen Collection, the largest private rya collection in Finland, are featured in an exhibition that opened at the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto in January.
Antti Tuomi
Antti Tuomi graduated as a furniture designer from what is today the LAB Institute of Design and Fine Arts. Most recently, for more than five years, he has mainly focused on custom projects and on developing a furniture collection bearing his own name. The Antti Tuomi collection is based on studies made in experimental and collapsible furniture structures, and in the ergonomics of upholstered furniture. Tuomi has done product development with Anna Lampinen, who has been working as the Antti Tuomi studio designer since 2017. Antti dreams of new office and exhibition spaces near good cross-country skiing trails.
More information:
Pia Sievinen, communications manager, Messukeskus, pia.sievinen@messukeskus.com
Download images of the Talenshop designers and their products here
Habitare, the largest furniture, design and interior decoration event in Finland, will be held at Messukeskus in Helsinki, from 13 to 17 September 2023. Habitare offers experiences and ideas on interior decoration, and on the functioning and look of homes and other spaces. Habitare highlights the ideas and works by a new generation of designers, and sparks discussion. | www.habitare.fi | @habitarefair | facebook.com/habitare | #habitare2023
