Hasta La Ideas

A preview of a London Design Week pop-up concept celebrating all things Finnish

A pop-up restaurant and concept space dedicated to all things Finnish, Hel Yes! forges together the tastes and sights of Finland for a clever take on an exhibit during the London Design Festival. The boundary-pushing installation is the work of former HIM keyboard player Antto Melasniemi along with London-based Finns, Mia Wallenius and Klaus Haapaniemi.

Underlining the excellence of Finnish design—Alvar Aalto‘s iconic 403 chairs (in never-before-seen colors) will be sprinkled throught the space, providing a veritable feast for the eyes as well as the stomach. Taking the form of a small campsite, guests will be ushered into decorated tents and seated on cot-like beds. Additional seating in the center at Linda Bergroth bespoke tables will allow for dining among Aspen trees (thinned from a managed forest) that have been saved from the chipper and turned into tiny dining huts.

Patrons will be treated to Chef Antto Melasniemi’s menu of traditional fish, game and preserves plus a daily special ingredient foraged by Hel Yes!’s own team of hunters and gatherers around London. Finland even comes into play in the tableware, an assortment of old Iittala and Arabia plates donated by participants of a Helsinki-based event earlier in the year.

A lead up to the Helsinki World Design Campaign 2010 program, this all-Finnish event is a must-see destination for the international creative class in town for London’s design festival.

Hel Yes! runs from 15 September-3 October 2010.

Two enterprising Swedes hit the streets to launch their spray can nozzle stool

This summer sees the full-scale production of “Cap” (the spray-can-nozzle-shaped stool that we previously featured in prototype stage on CH, accompanied by a campaign that literally takes it to the streets, featuring photographs of the stool in various unlikely urban scenarios. The cityscape theme plays on
the graffiti roots of the stool and shows how its mega-scale makes a playful design choice for those who like a little pop culture in their decor.

Inspired by the significance of street art, DFTS Factory co-founder Andreas Aaltonen emphasizes, “Cap is as much a stamp of belief and identity as it is a piece of furniture.” Aaltonen’s partner Gustaf Kjellin agrees, explaining, “The nozzle is essential to graffiti artists. It’s a tool, a carrier, a way of getting your message across. With “Cap” we want to give people another way to get the message across, that you share our love for this artform, yet convey that feeling in a more permanent way.”

The pair’s earnest approach to design carries through in their hard work setting up DFTS Factory to be an alternative to Sweden’s mainstream design companies. Focusing on production based on clever design and thinking and a respect for the environment, they eschew the practice of releasing products based around a traditional seasonal schedule. Instead, the pair only intend to release designs with timing they feel is appropriate in efforts to avoid problems inherent to the design industry, such as overconsumption and overproduction.

DFTS Factory plans on releasing more original designs, but also hopes to explore collaborative opportunities offered by other like-minded designers and artists in and around Scandinavia. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait too long to see its next release.

Pick up the current release from the
DFTS shop for €240.

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pEvery time I see a new, fancy-shmancy shaver on the market I’m tempted to run out and buy one, especially when it’s been heavily industrial-designed, like Norelco’s forthcoming A HREF=”http://www.target.com/Philips-Norelco-SensoTouch-Electric-Razor/dp/B003V37ZDS” Sensotouch 3D/A. But then I think of manly Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune shaving with knives (if I remember correctly) in “Hell in the Pacific,” and I figure my plain ol’ razor is best, as I ain’t no stinkin’ metrosexual./p

pStill, if I was gonna break my rule, the Sensotouch would probably be the one I’d try out. /p

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pThe multiple-articulated heads, the wet-dry functionality, the big-ass readout telling you how much juice you’ve got left; not to mention the fact that ID’er Byun Da-mi apparently slaved over this thing, as it took two freakin’ years to design and produce. (There’s a brief interview with Byun A HREF=”http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2924332″ here/A.) The main thing stopping me is the $200 price point and the framed picture of Lee Marvin in my bathroom./p

pThere’s a review of the Sensotouch 3D A HREF=”http://www.cravingtech.com/philips-sensotouch-3d-review-rq1290cc.html” here/A./p

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p align=center”Oh, yeah? Well as long as we’re being honest–brI don’t really care for your beard either!”/p
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pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/k4ePV6t1LiX5hoFih4kh2RPlxq4/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/k4ePV6t1LiX5hoFih4kh2RPlxq4/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/
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Back at the start of 2008, we asked in a post “Is the Chelsea Art Museum Breathing Its Last Breaths?” The museum and its founder/director, Dorothea Keeser, were struggling to pay its mortgage and it didn’t look like there was much hope. But they managed to keep afloat, even drawing up some talk outside of financials later that year when they cancelled an exhibition focused on terrorism. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that the museum is back to familiar territory. Keeser’s company that owns the museum’s building has filed for bankruptcy, two years of loan extensions continue to leave the institution on the verge of foreclosure, and perhaps most notable, to help pay bills, the museum has attempted to collateralize its permanent collection. Doing this “violates the regulations of the state Education Department’s Board of Regents, which supervises and grants charters to museums” and as such, the Chelsea could lose its charter. Losing its charter could lose it its nonprofit status. The bankruptcy might fight off foreclosure for a bit, but the charter issue adds another struggle to the already ever-battling museum. We were wrong with our question back in 2008, but we’ll see if we should have asked it again now.

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