North Stars: The New Generation of Finnish Designers

Janne Kyttänen

Janne Kyttänen was awarded Finland's "Young Designer of the Year" prize last year by Helsinki's Design Forum, but the words "Finnish" and "designer" aren't necessarily words he would use to describe himself.

Monarch Stools by Janne Kyttänen

Born in Finland, educated in Spain and in the Netherlands, and currently based in Amsterdam, Mr. Kyttänen, 34, heads up the firm Freedom of Creation, which uses high-tech design and production methods to make and distribute lighting, accessories and textiles. "Being an entrepreneur is more of a challenge," he says, speaking on the telephone from his office in Amsterdam. "Design is more like a walk in the park."

Often inspired by mathematical representations of natural forms -- part of his design process might include translating flower petal patterns into a mathematical series -- Mr. Kyttänen uses rapid manufacturing techniques, which allow designers to actualize designs from their computer screens by pushing a button.

Jane Kyttänen

Starting out as a fine powder, objects are then hardened, or "printed," in layers by a laser, rather than molded or conventionally assembled. The process, which became widespread in the 1990s as an inexpensive way to produce nylon industrial prototypes, allows for tremendous freedom. Mr. Kyttänen's designs can be transmitted as digital files and then produced on demand at six centers around the world, which he describes as a mixture of "factories and copy shops."

The technology can now be applied to a range of materials, but Mr. Kyttänen continues to use polyamide nylon, which is low in cost as well as adaptable.

Although he has designed everything from furniture to handbags, he is especially adept at lighting designs, which were among his first commissions. Dahlia, from 2005, is a flower-like lamp made of overlapping petals that can be mounted on a ceiling or wall; early this year he launched the Palm chandelier, which suggests foliage on a palm tree. Even so, he sees lighting as "a niche market," and says his real ambition is to create a whole industry, and control the way a range of objects are designed, produced and distributed. He says he imagines that one day private homes will be outfitted with machines to "print" his designs.

@FOC2005

Dahlia Lamp by Janne Kyttänen

His firm, which employs eight people, is also noted for its metal and nylon textiles, which can have a knitted or even welded appearance, but are actually created with a laser. Earlier this year, Mr. Kyttänen's textile designs were featured in an exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art called "Design and the Elastic Mind," which examined the relationship between contemporary design and science.

Family and language have long kept Mr. Kyttänen, a former professional squash player, connected to Finland. More recently he has been accepted and promoted by Finnish design circles as one of their own. "It's been quite nice to get to know them," he says of Finnish designers, although he claims to be "a bit of an oddball in that crowd."

Mikko Paakkanen

Mikko Paakkanen

A former carpenter, Helsinki designer Mikko Paakkanen, 32, is a rising star at Avarte, a Helsinki firm specializing in furniture for public spaces. Mr. Paakkanen's designs for Avarte include a sleek, throne-like armchair called Nietos (which means "snowdrift"' in Finnish), made from laminated birch, and Taitos (which means "fold"), a series of stackable birch and plastic chairs with distinctive cut-diamond seats and backs. Both come in a wide range of colors.

"Alvar Aalto hasn't been a big name for me," he says. "You don't get a kick using the same materials" associated with Aalto, like wood and glass.

He says he worked as a carpenter for years, but found that creating new things was easier for him than building. He studied at Helsinki's University of Art and Design, where he is now a teacher in the Master's program.

Nietos Armchair by Mikko Paakkanen

His studio, a former shoe-repair shop in a 1960s modernist block (which he calls "maybe the ugliest building in this area"), is dominated by an impressive wall hanging made out of sections from his Taitos chairs.

In his latest project, shown last week at the opening of Helsinki Design Week, Mr. Paakkanen uses the polyurethane foam found in air filters to make lounge chairs. "I've tried to make [the chairs] look like solid foam pieces," says Mr. Paakkanen. Record producer DJ Slow, one of Finland's leading music personalities, has created electronic music to play through speakers in the chairs, so "you can hear the sound through the material," says Mr. Paakkanen. The installation will be on view in Avarte's showroom in Helsinki through Christmas.

Kokoro & Moi

Ilpo Musto

Designers Antti Hinkul and Teemu Suviala in their studio

Punavuori, a gentrifying industrial district near Helsinki's shipyards, is the Finnish capital at its hippest. Here you can find real-life testimonials to the city's multi-functionalist design wave, like Karaoke Restroom, a 1950s public toilet turned Karaoke bar, and Moko Market, a bohemian café and retro-furniture emporium, outfitted with conference rooms for business meetings.

And it's the place to find the studio of Kokoro & Moi, a young, freewheeling design firm. Founder and creative director Teemu Suviala, 31, and his partner Antti Hinkula, 32, along with their staff of five, design everything from in-house projects for corporate clients like Nokia to Web sites, logos, T-shirts and promotional posters and marketing strategies for clients like the Finnish ceramics firm Iittala.

The firm's poster for Koneisto, a Helsinki electronic-music festival, uses a dizzying range of images and patterns -- Korean floral prints, a pair of nudes embracing, a doodle of a bomb and a runny version of a bar code. The various images are brought together in a gravity-free, mural-like format.

Originally known as Syrup Helsinki, the firm changed its name earlier this year after their New York partners were acquired by a larger firm. The new name combines kokoro, the Japanese word for soul, with a word Mr. Suviala says he noticed on a distinctive restaurant sign in Norway, where one of the chefs is named Moi. The name "really describes the way we work," he says, summing up the firm's design philosophy as "combining different elements" together. "The interesting thing is the collision," he says.

Kokoro & Moi's 2006 project for Iittala's 125th anniversary.

"We listen to music in our office all the time," says Mr. Suviala, over coffee in one of Moko Market's conference rooms. "And we sometimes think of ourselves as visual composers."

He cites as a major influence the New York hip-hop group De La Soul, known for their upbeat message and innovative sampling, which come together in a distinctive, layered sound. Other influences include comic books, the skateboarding and snowboarding cultures, and artists like Marcel Duchamp.

"They're full of ideas," says Helsinki industrial designer Ilkka Suppanen, of Messrs. Suviala and Hinkula. "They have a huge amount of energy and they're working with people all over the world."

Mr. Suviala says the lack of a strong graphic-arts tradition in Finland "gives us the freedom to experiment." He also believes that Finland's weather influences their work. "Sometimes we think that the long, dark winters are the reason for us going totally nuts with colors and forms."

Mikko Laakkonen

Mikko Laakkonen

"That sausage was an accident," says Helsinki designer Mikko Laakkonen. We are sitting in the kitchen of his small studio in the Töölö section of town, a few streets away from Alvar Aalto's elegant modernist concert house, Finlandia Hall, built in the 1960s. The "sausage" in question refers to another kind of '60s modernism, the City-Center building, known as "the Sausage House" in honor of a distinctive concrete balustrade around the building's parking level -- which the architects didn't anticipate would be so conspicuous. "I like it," says Mr. Laakkonen, of the severe building, with a boyish smile.

The work of Mr. Laakkonen, 34, is anything but severe. Instead it's an ingenious mixture of diligence and whimsy. His mirthful appreciation of concrete blocks, however, isn't a surprise. As his designs demonstrate, he can find humor in the least likely of places.

Latva Coatrack by Mikko Laakkonen

His witty Latva coatrack, produced by the Italian firm Covo, uses powder-coated steel to create something like a minimalist sapling grove (in Finnish, latva means treetop), which can stand alone, or can be lined up like a forest to create a prankish room divider. He has also created a humorous cast-iron grill pan, called Vege, which gives food the outlines of leaves instead of traditional grill marks, an effect Mr. Laakkonen refers to as "steak and veggies."

Born in nearby Espoo, 20 kilometers west of Helsinki, and a graduate of Helsinki's University of Art and Design, Mr. Laakkonen shares his studio with a small group of fellow designers who exhibit together at the Milan Furniture Fair under the name Rehti (the word means "honest").

Mr. Laakkonen regularly uses materials that have been outside the mainstream of Finnish furniture design. He first attracted attention in 2003, when he joined other young Finnish designers who drove from Helsinki to the Milan Furniture Fair in a mobile exhibition space called Saunabus -- a bus outfitted with a real sauna and a range of witty prototypes. Kolee, Mr. Laakkonen's design for an illuminated bed, had a polyester mattress that included a luminescent film used in cellphones -- you could turn it on and off with a switch.

In a short period of time, Mr. Laakkonen "has gone from being a student to being able to work well" with manufacturers, says Helsinki designer Ilkka Suppanen. "He is one of those guys who will stay around."

Harri Koskinen

Designer Harri Koskinen excels at making the simple seem original. "I have been really comfortable with basic materials," he says. "Even a wooden chair can be a really new thing."

Harri Koskinen's 'Block Lamp'

His first success, the Block Lamp, turned a light bulb and a clear block of glass into a must-have item. Designed in 1996, while he was still a student at Helsinki's University of Art and Design, the lamp has sold more than 50,000 world-wide and is a well-known example of cutting-edge Scandinavian design. By suggesting fire and ice, points out Helsinki designer Ilkka Suppanen, Mr. Koskinen came across "a combination that is iconic."

Since then Mr. Koskinen, 38, whose Helsinki studio, Friends of Industry, employs five other designers, has designed everything from tables, chairs and packaging to T-shirts and speakers. In 2004, he won the Compasso d'Oro award, one of the design world's most prestigious, for his oak Muu chair, which combines Finnish forms with Italian craftsmanship.

Harri Koskinen

Mr. Koskinen has close relationships with the three big names of Finnish design -- Iittala, makers of glass and ceramics; Artek, the furniture label founded by Alvar Aalto; and Marimekko, the textile and clothing company. "I don't need fancy new materials or new technology," he says, "but I am eager to play with those as well."

A good example of that is his relationship with Genelec, a leading producer of professional studio speakers located in the center of Finland, a few hours by car from the farm where Mr. Koskinen grew up. Genelec founder Ilpo Martikainen says one of the company's product ranges needed an updated look. "Not a facelift, but a total redesign," he says. "Harri's asset is that he can make engineering beautiful."

Arihiro Miyake

"People here were good at using wood," says Japanese-born, Helsinki-based designer Arihiro Miyake, "But I thought I should try something else." He used aluminum for his cabinet called 1789 and for a set of disposable cutlery called Do!, scheduled for a launch next year. Both pieces are marked by expert craftsmanship and flexibility.

Ilpo Musto

Arihiro Miyake with his 'Click Lamp'

The 1789 cabinet, produced by Top-Mouton, the Belgian interior-design and home-furnishings firm, features a system of puzzle-like adjustable doors that allow the customer to change the cabinet's colors and aesthetic effect, depending on its function or the customer's mood. Do! cutlery comes flat in a single, pre-cut aluminum sheet and pops out for use. They are durable enough to reuse, and economical enough to throw away after one use.

Mr. Miyake, 33, says that his motto is "keep space for the user," saying the flexibility of his designs allows his customers to become like collaborators in their ability to shape and reshape the look and function of his pieces.

String chaise lounge, a prototype by Arihiro Miyake

Mr. Miyake, who grew up in Kobe, first came to Finland in 1999 to study, and he later graduated from the master's program at Helsinki's University of Art and Design, where he now teaches part-time. He currently lives and works in the Arabianranta section of Helsinki, where he often collaborates on interiors with his girlfriend, the Italian-born, Helsinki-based industrial designer Valentina Folli.

Mr. Miyake's level of ambition is so high, says Helsinki designer Ilkka Suppanen, who included Mr. Miyake's designs in "Hardcore," an exhibition of contemporary Finnish design held earlier this year in New York. Nick Top, managing director of Top-Mouton, agrees. Mr. Miyake "doesn't want to make any concessions," he says, adding he "has a sense of detail, and I'm talking millimeters," uncommon in a designer.

• wsje.weekend@wsj.com