The brightest ideas of the Helsinki Design Week festival, which definitely make our world a little better.
For 15 years, every fall, the largest festival Helsinki Design Week introduces both industry professionals and a wide audience to the key trends in modern fashion, design, architecture and urban culture of the Nordic countries. This year was no exception – during the week, more than a dozen events took place within HDW, including a large-scale exhibition that brought together reputable and young designers, Children’s Design Week and Pecha Kucha Night.
The 2020 festival was held under the motto Commitment Matters, urging all community members to pay special attention to sustainability and ethical production. That is why among the participants of the design show there were many who work in the concepts of conscious consumption and recycling. Here are some of the brightest brands.
UDUMBARA
The founder of the brand handcrafts ceramic pots and furnishings using raw clay from the village of Kultela in southwestern Finland. Rough, unprepared material, which takes its shape on a potter’s wheel, imparts a special warm color and porous texture to the products. In addition to manual labor, the studio uses solar energy, which literally powers all work processes.
I Hats
The Helsinki brand sews monochrome wide-brimmed hats in a minimalist style. Such accessories open up ample opportunities for expressing the individuality of your own style. All hats are handcrafted using premium materials, eco-friendly wool sourced from Northern Europe. As a supporter of the sustainable development of the fashion industry, the team is guided by three core values: timeless design, sustainable processes and excellence, encouraging audiences to choose the best.
BEE CLEVER
The brand makes everyday biodegradable items with plastic properties, but no plastic in the composition. The products are made in Finland from recycled fabrics and coated with beeswax. Now, on the company’s website, you can order baby bibs or waxed napkins designed for careful storage of food, replacing containers or plastic bags. After use, the products can be rinsed and reused as intended, and at the end of the life cycle, composted or incinerated.
PURE WASTE
On its website, the brand presents dry statistics: 95% of products could get a second life, but only 15% goes into recycling, and 3,5 million tons of produced things are thrown into landfills. Aware of the scale of the disaster, the brand today produces fabrics that are 100% recycled. Of these, the company produces its own clothing line, and also collaborates with various firms and organizers of major events, creating sustainable merchandise and corporate products.
NIIMAAR
The brand creates stylish and practical waste collection and recycling stations. The structures themselves were designed by the Finnish designer Harri Koskinen, who has won numerous professional awards. Robust and functional, the objects are suitable for both multipurpose use and can replace a table, bench or storage system. The minimalistic design and laconic materials allow the stations to harmoniously integrate into the interior of any style.