Lecturers

www.monicaforster.se

Monica Förster’s design studio in Stockholm works worldwide with clients such as Poltrona Frau, Tacchini, Modus, E&Y Japan, Offecct and Swedese. Förster has studied in Konstfack, University of Arts Crafts and Design, and in Beckmans School of Design, Stockholm, Sweden. She has received many design awards, including Designer of the Year 2007 and 2006 in Sweden.

The shapes of Förster’s objects often refer to nature. A small forest becomes the basis for a room divider, a lofty cloud inspires the concept for a portable room, and the rhythm of chair backrests surges like the sea. Förster is interested in impressions constructed out of fabrics and folds too, and many of her objects remind one of feminine forms. She has also designed the world’s first ergonomic office chair for women. “Lei” is the result of a lengthy study on female sitting posture and is ergonomically designed to prevent occupational injury.

Monica Förster’s design is composed of many sentiments and even contradictions – creating something new, strong, useful and poetic. Her work is categorised by the meeting of pure form, the use of either vivid colours or no colours, and a curiosity about new materials and new technology. Always trying to work in a cross-disciplinary way, she invents and renews typologies in industrial, furniture and object design.

naoto fukasawa design

Naoto Fukasawa has worked in a consulting capacity as well as designed domestically, in Europe and other parts of Asia. His design experience is both diverse and widespread, ranging from electronics to furniture, and is recognised on a global scale. He continues to hold the “Without Thought” workshops which explore his own personal perspective regarding people’s unconscious memories and actions leading the way to design.

According to the “Without Thought” philosophy, people, or physical entities, naturally attempt to harmonise unthinkingly (unconsciously) with the environment or situation that surrounds them. Even when using an object, they do not think of that object as they use it, just as we are able to walk more naturally if we do not consciously think of the floor or our legs. “Action” is therefore not being explicitly conscious or acknowledging the situation around us, but sensing or feeling it with our physical person. Because we cannot become aware of our surroundings by only “looking” with our eyes – it is more like “touching”, feeling all the subtle information that is involved.

Design is not something that provides a stimulus to people’s emotions. Fukasawa says: “I believe that it is something that is blended into unconscious, unaware actions. It also harmonises something as one part of a whole, and ensures that it isn’t conspicuous. The rules of haiku poetry are called ‘objective portrayal’: it’s not about expressing one’s own view, but composing a poem objectively, giving the facts, and in doing so expressing one’s sentiments. Design, I believe, is completely synonymous with this.”

Studio Simo Heikkilä
www.periferiadesign.fi

Simo Heikkilä is a furniture, interior and exhibition designer. Heikkilä set up his own studio in 1971. Currently, he works as the head of the Wood Studio at the Aalto University School of Art and Design. During his career Heikkilä has won many prizes, including the prestigious Pro Finlandia medal in 2003. He is also the “father” of the Alvar Aalto Design Seminar: his original concept of a seminar focusing on design is now organised triennially.

Heikkilä continues the tradition of clean-lined Scandinavian design. His furniture is characterised by exposed structures, ergonomics and purity of materials. In his work, Heikkilä is interested in experimentation, collaborating and being supported by craftspeople. Through this collaboration he has been able to increase his knowledge of different materials, use it in his design work and share it through his teaching.

Defending local manufacture is important to Heikkilä. In 2003, he implemented an exhibition entitled Local = Lokal = Lukaali. For the exhibition, he designed apartment interiors, confining himself to basic objects that are absolutely necessary for living. The objects were produced in the workshops of Finnish craftspeople and companies investing in product development and design. Alongside local manufacture, Heikkilä wishes to support cultural heritage. In 2005, he organised a leuku (Sami knife) workshop, which focused on supporting and reinforcing the manufacture of “the big knife”, a basic tool in the natural economy of the Sami.

Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe
solaris.hfg-karlsruhe.de

Hans Maier-Aichen is a professor of product design at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. He regularly lectures at various universities in China and other Asian countries. The interaction with students and emerging designers from different cultural backgrounds is of major significance in his daily work as a teacher, author and consultant in the field of design.

In 1980, Maier -Aichen founded the Authentics brand, one of the most famous design-driven consumer product companies. To develop the new trademark, he attracted young talents to his design team and challenged them to design products for daily use. Now, thirty years later, he wants to position a generation of either craft-based or so-called conceptual designers as rebels operating against “the market” – against industrial production, consumerism, globalisation and any other system that he feels has been tainted by the financial crisis. His early experience with Asian, African and South American product cultures in the ’70s and ’80s – as a cultural adviser for the Common Market – leads him back today to the question “What will happen with Design for the Other 90% in the future?.”

Hans Maier-Aichen has recently curated an exhibition, Lapse in Time, for the ExperimentaDesign Biennale 2009 in Lisbon, showing design projects from 18 young international designers who have initiated border-crossing practices involving cognitive sciences, socio-ecology and the fine arts as a response to a growing mainstream industrial design mentality lacking innovative identity.

Lovegrove Studio
www.katrin-olina.com

Born in Iceland, Katrin Olina studied Industrial Design at the E.S.D.I. in Paris before working in the European design studios of Philippe Starck (Paris) and Ross Lovegrove (London). Since then, she has worked predominantly as a graphic artist and illustrator in the fields of industrial design, fashion, interiors, print and animation. Her work has also been featured in several prominent museum and gallery exhibitions around the world.

Olina has developed a rich visual language that builds on research, experimentation and intuitive creative drawing processes that combine the use of technology with the hand drawn. Her imagery and graphics are often centered around natural elements and the imaginary. As her work has evolved, Olina has created a personal world where sense of wonder, new experiences and questions about the nature of things abound.

Olina has also collaborated with high tech companies such as materials producers Dupont Corian and 3M. Her clients have included porcelain manufacturer Rosenthal and furniture manufacturer Swedese. In addition, she has worked as a consultant and visualizer in the field of creative development for organizations such as Clear Village Foundation.

In 2008, she created Eulespiegel, an animation featuring otherworldly landscapes and imaginary creatures. Another recent project has been Cristal Bar in Hong Kong where her dream-like drawings cover every interior surface, enabling a new level of interactivity in three-dimensional space. Cristal Bar has won numerous international awards, including the Forum Aid Award in Stockholm, the SEGD Merit Prize in San Diego and the DV Culture Prize in Iceland in 2009. Olina is currently working on the natural history of the characters that populate her growing world and developing narratives around them.

AWARDS:
FIT, Iceland. - Grand Prix, Graphic design 2008 /for SKIN
FORUM AID, Sweden. - BEST INTERIOR 2009/for Cristal Bar
SEGD, San Diego, US. - Merit Prize 2009/for Cristal Bar
DV Culture Prize Iceland. - Design 2009

Chairman of the seminar board
Aalto University School of Art and Design
www.taik.fi

Timo Salli is a designer and the Professor and head of the Applied Art and Design master’s degree programme in the Aalto University School of Art and Design. Salli’s background is that of a metalworker and welder. He has studied at the Lahti Design Institute and University of Art and Design Helsinki.

“Snowcrash”, a designer collective to which Salli belonged, had a successful entrant in the Milan Salone furniture fair in 1997. Snowcrash designers believed that the home of the future will be furnished with light, flexible and adaptable products. A computerised home can function with such products. Since being part of Snowcrash Timo Salli has worked in the fields of product design, exhibition architecture and acted as a curator and producer of design exhibitions. One of the most memorable works is the ‘100’ exhibition in the year 2000 when Helsinki was an official European City of Culture.

In 2003 the first results of the new Applied Art and Design master’s degree programme led by Salli were shown at the Milan furniture fair: the well-publicised and admired “Saunabus” (www.saunabus. org). This was followed by the “New Dining Luxury” and “Imperfect Home” projects, shown in Cologne and Milan 2004–06, and the most recent “Helsinki Hotel” (Helsinki and Milan 2007).

Inga Sempé
www.ingasempe.fr

Inga Sempé is a designer who focuses on objects, lighting, furniture and fabrics. She opened her own studio in Paris in 2000. Sempé graduated from ENSCI-Les Ateliers (Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle, Paris) in 1993. From 2000 till 2001, she was a scholarship holder at the Villa Medici, Académie de France in Rome. She was awarded the Grand Prix de la Création en design de la ville de Paris in 2003.

Inga Sempé’s aim is to find some new uses and shapes for everyday objects in daily life. She conceives objects that could suit the interiors of the elderly and that could also be bought by younger people. Sempé describes herself as a proponent of anonymous culture – as it was at one of the flea markets where she used to go twice a week as a teenager. “I have always been more interested in a corkscrew than Manet paintings, so I guess being part of the creation of objects that would go in shops or have life in homes is what I really care about.”

Sempé has collaborated with the Italian companies Cappellini and Edra. Currently, Sempé works with French companies such as Ligne Roset, Moustache, Domestic, Baccarat; Italian companies such as LucePlan; Scandinavian companies such as Wästberg, David Design, Hjelle, Almedahl’s; and the American company Artecnica. She has also had a solo exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2003.

Kram/Weisshaar
www.kramweisshaar.com

Reed Kram and Clemens Weisshaar founded Kram/Weisshaar in Munich and Stockholm in 2002. The office specialises in the design of spaces, products and media and engages designers, architects and engineers from Germany, Spain, Sweden, the UK, the US and Japan.

Kram/Weisshaar closely links products with the planning of production processes. The aim is to combine traditional production methods with the latest technological innovations. Kram/ Weisshaar’s breakthrough project was Breeding Tables: a table with legs designed by a computer. With this project, the designers abandoned the idea that a product should always be a reproduction of one prototype. Breeding Tables uses a new kind of process that enables mass production of unique products.

With their seminal projects for Prada’s Epicenter Stores in Los Angeles and New York with Rem Koolhaas, and their work for Authentics, Classicon, Moroso and Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg, they quickly garnered wide international recognition. Works by Kram/ Weisshaar have been included in a number of design collections: the Vitra Design Museum, the Pinakothek der Moderne, the Centre Pompidou and The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA.