Free-thinking, not frozen

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This was published 11 years ago

Free-thinking, not frozen

Design DNA ... sunning by Helsinki harbour.

Design DNA ... sunning by Helsinki harbour.Credit: Alamy

On the well-designed streets of Helsinki, Dugald Jellie absorbs the city's creative genius.

It's a city with no Starbucks. It's a city that's the HQ of Nokia. It's a city where architects are gods, trains run on time and citizens borrow more public library books (18 each a year) than anywhere else on Earth. It's a city of equality and diplomacy - a go-between during the Cold War, geographically removed and filled with people who curiously lend the English lexicon only one word: sauna.

Three days in the world's second-most northerly capital (after Reykjavik), I think it also a city where anything is possible.

Tram time in Helsinki.

Tram time in Helsinki.Credit: Alamy

How else to explain meeting a chef as big as a bear who runs a portable solar restaurant ("We open on only sunny days," he says); or attending a block party on docks where most of the world's ice-breakers are built; or ending up one night in the back of a karaoke taxi, even though I hate karaoke and cannot sing - especially not in Finnish.

Helsinki is that sort of place, a "hoop-jumping city of problem-solvers", as Monocle magazine suggested in its latest index of the world's most liveable cities, ranking it No.1 - ahead of Zurich, Copenhagen, Munich and Melbourne. "Hidden up at the top of Europe, they tend to keep their success to themselves."

By most measures, this greater metropolis of 1.35 million people (comparable in size to Adelaide) punches well above its weight, and not just on the ice-hockey rink. Olympic Games? Done that. Architecture in Helsinki? The city is a temple to the high priest of modernism, Alvar Aalto. Coffee culture? Finns consume way more beans per person (12 kilograms) than any other nation.

Design District Helsinki features 190 sites.

Design District Helsinki features 190 sites.Credit: Getty Images

And this unorthodox city - built for cold, in the only country where all ports freeze in winter - has this year been chosen as the World Design Capital. Who can argue with that? From Iittala glassware to Nokia phones, Marimekko textiles, Kone elevators and Angry Birds video games, self-effacing Finnish know-how has quietly engineered a boom economy from rational thought and creativity.

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"Design is part of the city's DNA," says Milla Visuri, an organiser of the biennial design event - awarded by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design - set to climax in September with Helsinki Design Week. "Our difficult winter has made us be functional in the things that we do and the things that we use."

What other city, for instance, could have inspired Unikko, a bold and splashy poppy pattern that's one of the world's most recognised fabric prints? Created in 1964 by Maija Isola for Marimekko, it endures as a fashion staple - and as a counterpoint to the monotone grimness of a Helsinki winter.

Local designers talk often of the touchstone of nature: the brutal punctuation of winter and the muse of pure materials - wood, water, rock. "Finnish design is very simple, it comes from nature," says Anni Ailinpieti, a manager at Artek, the modernist furniture shop co-founded in 1935 by Alvar and Aina Aalto. "It is a design of austerity. It does not have what we say are unnecessary curves."

But that's not to say this rinsed-clean city of granite and silver birches isn't without whimsy. Block parties are a summer ritual. So, too, is the "culture tram", an otherwise routine (and unerringly punctual) mode of transport that engages route 7B passengers with theatre, music and art installations during weekday-afternoon peak hours.

The city embraces pop-ups. "The council has days when anyone can set up a restaurant, without all the permissions," Visuri says. When this ephemeral restaurant day was held in February, projects included soup kitchens, a late-night raw-food kiosk and a sandwich bar that lowered orders in baskets from a city apartment window.

Such entrepreneurship is enhanced by the city's workable size, with its agreeable tension between competition and co-operation. "It's small enough for shops and designers to have their own personality, but big enough for variety and for distinct communities," says Anu Penttinen, 37, a glass-blower who studied at Canberra School of Art and now runs Nounou Design in the city's design district. "People here really push design limits, they think outside the box."

This creativity extends beyond industrial design and into the realms of town planning, cultural development, social equality, financial discipline and investment in the common good. "Finns never complain about taxes," says a city tour guide, Maria Hanninen. Finland's education system, for example, is the envy of most others: 93 per cent of students complete high school and 66 per cent continue to tertiary education - the highest rate in the European Union. "What they do complain about is the weather, especially winter."

It's a harsh season that turns the capital into a grand theatre of ice. Arrive by air, for instance, and you descend into HEL - the international code for Helsinki-Vantaa airport. Despite deep snows and temperatures plunging to minus 25 degrees, this gateway has closed for only half an hour in the past eight years.

HEL, in other words, rarely freezes over.

On a whirlwind tour of the city, Hanninen shows off sights that confirm Helsinki's place in the world. It's a city of Lutheran churches, embassies, art nouveau and international modernist buildings, and silver-glistening tram tracks by the shores of the Baltic.

But just as engaging is her commentary on the city's nous. Utility services are insulated underground. Triple-glazing is standard. Some city dwellers ski to work in winter. Even their vowel-rich language - from the incongruous Ugric group that includes Hungarian and Estonian - seems to have its own mechanisms for managing the cold. "Finnish has no prepositions, no case endings, no word for please," Hanninen says. "But it does have 20 words that all mean snow."

Dugald Jellie travelled courtesy of Finnair and Visit Helsinki.

Finnair has a fare to Helsinki from Sydney and Melbourne for about $1980 low-season return, including tax. Fly to Singapore (about 8hr, code share with Qantas), then to Helsinki (12hr 30min); see finnair.com. For the same fare (tax will vary) you can travel beyond Helsinki to various European cities and travel via a number of Asian cities with partner airlines.

Helsinki's big ideas and grand designs

Marimekko

Jacqueline Kennedy wore a simple pink Marimekko dress on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1960 and the Finnish fashion house, founded in 1951, became an overnight sensation. Then came the Unikko (poppy) print, and in design circles it was a household name. "It's all about bold prints and colour," says Laura Pollari, who works for the company. "We want to be joyful, we want to bring happiness to people's lives." The flagship city shop is an explosion of colour. Catch a metro train six stops from Rautatientori (at Central railway station) to Herttoniemi and walk to its HQ — on an industrial estate, with a factory outlet store and the best workplace canteen imaginable. Open to public. Bring your passport for a VAT refund cheque on all purchases more than €40. The main city shop is at Pohjoisesplanadi 33; factory outlet at Kirvesmiehenkatu 7; see marimekko.com.

Artek

An interior decorator's dream come true, Artek (art + technology) was a "sales and propaganda centre for the new housing technology" founded in 1935 by idealists Alvar and Aino Aalto, Maire Gullichsen and Nils-Gustav Hahl. Here was the new way of living, an everyday synthesis between town planning, architecture, design, the arts and domestic life. "Understand Alvar Aalto's stool and you understand the basis of his philosophy," the Asia and Australia area manager, Anni Ailinpieti, says. A Charles and Ray Eames lounge chair and ottoman in the front window has a cool price: €10,028.

At Etelaesplanadi 18; see artek.fi.

Design Museum

This is ground zero of Design District Helsinki, a web of 25 streets with 190 spots (shops, studios, bars, hotels, cafes and more) showcasing Nordic urban culture. The museum's Finnish form collection includes international design classics: Alvar Aalto's No.31 chair (1931) and his three-legged stacking stool; Eero Saarinen's tulip chair (1956); Eero Aarnio's fibreglass ball chair (1966); Fiskars' Orange-handled Scissors (1967); various 1960s Marimekko fabrics and dresses. Great cafe. At Korkeavuorenkatu 23, see designmuseum.fi.

Design Forum Finland

This is a showroom, shop, information kiosk and gallery run by the Finnish Society for Crafts and Design (founded in 1875) that spruiks all things Finnish. It's a good place to spend a lot of money very quickly on beautiful form and function. I want all its tea towels. At Erottajankatu 7, designforum.fi.

Arabia

Urban redevelopment has transformed Helsinki's foreshore, opening up old docks and, in the case of Arabia, a former porcelain factory (established in 1873) made famous by Kaj Franck(1911-1989), a design hero of Finnish functionalism and stackable tableware. It's now a mixed-use neighbourhood — and a last stop on tram routes 6 and 8 — combining commercial, residential, community gardens and retail spaces that here include the Arabia factory shop with second-quality Iittala designs and discontinued lines. See also the Arabia museum and gallery, with weekday guided tours of its working factory. Visit the Aralis Library to sit in the cone of silence of Saarinen's tulip chair (warning: hard to get out of). The last word in Finnish town planning. At Arabiakeskus, Hameentie 135, see arabia.fi.

Temppeliaukio Church

If nature is a cathedral, then here's its highest order. Designed by architect brothers, and built in 1969, the Lutheran "Rock church" is a crowning glory on Finnish modernism — a place of worship hewn into a pink-granite knoll and capped with a shallow dome coiled with 22 kilometres of copper stripping. An architectural (and acoustic) wonder. Not to be missed. At Lutherinkatu 3.

Finlandia Hall

A is for Alvar Aalto (1898-1976), Finland's "father of modernism", an architect famous for his sensuous 1936 Savoy vase, his chairs and stackable stools, and a list of public buildings topped by Finlandia Hall, a concert hall clad in gleaming white Italian marble, designed in 1962 and opened in 1971. A boxy structure, it's best seen from the inside looking out (with internal black, white and cobalt blue ceramics that induce tile envy). One-hour tours cost €11.50. Stop for coffee or champagne at the downstairs Cafe Veranda and dream of your new designer life.

See finlandiatalo.fi/en.

Iittala

The Finnish glassworks, founded in 1881, made its mark on world design in 1930s with Aino Aalto's range of drinking glasses, then husband Alvar Aalto's iconic vase — launched at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, said to mimic the Finnish coastline. The company's homeware range follows the philosophy of its celebrated designer, Kaj Franck: "Objects should always be appropriate, durable and functional." Its flagship shop is a place also of elegance and beauty. At Pohjoisesplanadi 25, see iittala.com.

Nounou Design

"The candy colours I use are not very Finnish," says Anu Penttinen, a glass-blower who sells from this shop in Helsinki's design district between jobs for Iittala and Marimekko. "I think this vibrancy originated from my travels to Australia." Her opaque glass objects of desire can be found at Uudenmaankatu 2, see nounoudesign.fi.

Helsinki Central railway station

Train spotting? It's not in guidebooks, but waiting for the daily 11.37am train from Moscow — one of the great linking journeys in the history of travel, from Russia to the West — I feel greater excitement than approaching any museum or gallery. It's also one of the world's great terminals: a 1919 art-nouveau masterwork designed by Eliel Saarinen, bookended by four massive stylised granite statues that hold globe lamps and stand as sentinels to Finnish nationalism. A new fast train links St Petersburg, if you have papers in order.

Kauppatori

Known as the "Daughter of the Baltic", this waterfront market square is edged by a bronze statue of the naked mermaid, Havis Amanda — the city's figurehead, all thighs and breasts in a demure pose among water-spurting fish and sea lions. This is where Helsinki gathers to celebrate by the water (the statue is washed each year on April 30 to welcome summer), where fishmongers, florists, fruiters and fur-traders sell wares under orange canvas on stone paving. The city's historic heart, by the slap'n'tickle of the Baltic tide.

Eating there

Fazer Karl Fazer opened this French-Russian cafe in 1891 and his family name ever since has been synonymous with the blue wrapper of Fazerin Sininen milk chocolate, one of Finland's most esteemed brands. The cafe remains a great Helsinki social occasion: all chrome doors, mirrored walls, quiches, shrimp sandwiches, soups, cakes, timber chair legs scraping on marble, and a chocolate counter that is a spectacle of wonder. Kluuvikatu 3, see fazer.com.

Wanha Kauppahalli (Old Market Hall) Helsinki is a fishy city, and this waterfront 1880s red-brick public hall is the essential place for seafood broth — or pickled herring. Stalls offer regional delicacies: Karelian pastries, black caviar, Arctic char, smoked eel, sea-urchin roe, lingonberry sauces. A sign says: cold-smoked reindeer sirloin, €6.90/100g ($8.90/100g). At Etelaranta 1.

Cafe Aalto If only for the blueberry pie. Designed by its namesake architect, this upstairs room is pure Helsinki civility. "It's a sympathetic city," the manager, Marco Saracino, says, "especially for coffee drinkers." Brass lights, white marble floor, black leather chairs — utterly lovely. At Keskuskatu 1, see cafeaalto.fi.

Staying there

Klaus K Pretend you're a rock-star architect, or a visiting global fashion blogger, or a video-game super-creative — it's that sort of place in this sort of city. Part of the global collection of Design Hotels, Klaus K is in the refurbished 1882 German school for girls, with rooms based on

themes of mysticism, passion, desire and envy. Chic fashion isn't cheap: double rooms cost from €175. At Bulevardi 2-4, see klauskhotel.com/en.

More information

See wdchelsinki2012.fi/en; finnishdesign.com; helsinki.fi/en.


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