Helsinki I

As many of you know, Helsinki is an interesting city. It’s this funny hybrid of Scandinavian folksiness and Soviet utilitarianism. It is also happens to be the cleanest capitol city I’ve ever visited. Sterile even. Like you could lick the tram tracks and they might taste minty. Anyway, you see this as you walk the streets, but living there and experiencing it as a whole culture was something that really resonated with me during my two extended stays. Everything has a purpose and that thing—a window latch, a toilet paper holder, an elevator—is crafted beautifully. There are no frills, no gimmicks, no ornaments, no fluff, but everything is quality, clean and honest. That’s the way I encountered people, too. They did their jobs quietly and diligently with no song and dance, but with positive energy that was attractive.

The contrasts to me were astounding. Here I was an American—Excess is our middle name. We are used to more, bigger, better, faster, sweeter, brighter, etc. But I had just spent the last year thrown into a post-Soviet hangover where everything was run down, falling apart, gray, and unkempt, and uncared for. The attitudes of course, are similar respectively. (By the way, I’m not knocking Lativa or its people! In 1995 the country was till traumatized.) Socialism is just a different animal, I guess, and from my tiny perspective, it was working in Finland.

I appreciated the pride the Finnish people took in themselves, their work, and their community, and I appreciated the functional beauty they created out of very simple things. For me it was all very comfortable. At the time, I didn’t realize how important this would become for me in my approach to design, but truly, for my approach to living.