As the World Design Capital 2012, Helsinki will open up the city to design and people, pushing the limits of design while remaining committed to the real needs of people. Helsinki will invite both the Finnish and the international design community to create projects that will affect people’s understanding of design and the opportunities of design to effect change, as well as to improve design in various fields.

 

Helsinki’s main events in 2012 will comprise high-profile, big name activities. Embedded design events will connect design to all aspects of life in Helsinki. Satellite events will reach around the globe.

 

Some of the year’s events will be organized in collaboration with the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (Icsid), the organization that manages the World Design Capital project. Helsinki’s design year will be launched at midnight on New Year 2012, with a major celebration on the Senate Square.

 

Helsinki’s global build-up to 2012 will include participation and visibility at design weeks, festivals and major international gatherings around the world. Helsinki will invite to the city 100 renowned designers from around the globe, who will each identify 10 more designers to be hosted in Helsinki, with the goal that together they produce up to 1,000 embedded design innovations.

 

All people in Helsinki and visitors to the city will have an opportunity to influence and participate in the year’s programme planning. This World Design Capital 2012 website will invite everybody to make suggestions for programme items and to express their views on the plans during 2010.

 

Some of the design year’s events will embrace Helsinki’s rich architectural layers. There will be opportunities to bathe at the seaside Finnish Sauna Society in Lauttasaari, to participate in a wide variety of events involving architecture and industrial design organized by the new Aalto University, and to become acquainted with the body of work by the young Helsinki designer generation.

 

Helsinki Design Week is a city design programme with long traditions. Similar programmes will be organized in Helsinki as well as in Espoo, Vantaa, Kauniainen and Lahti, the other participants in the Helsinki World Design Capital project. The Finnish Design Slam exhibition at the Cable Factory will put on display and juxtapose old Finnish design classics against new masterpieces of Helsinki Design.

 

Design District Helsinki is home to a high concentration of design shops and other design players in the Helsinki city centre. The district will be a year-long showroom of Finnish design and an excellent venue for the design year’s events.

 

Interior decoration and furniture will be the focus of the annual early-autumn Habitare fair, the largest Finnish design trade show, as well as the Forma and Sisusta furniture fairs in the spring. Lahti Biennale 2012 will be a major design event in Lahti, incorporating the Olo.Muoto ´12 fair.

 

Helsinki’s World Design Capital 2012 programme will include a series of events embracing public service and sports design, wood architecture, design and technological innovations for the elderly, design exhibits in city trams, food design, design in school curricula, and design in the service of fighting climate change.

 

The many annual cultural festivals will make their contributions to the embedded design theme of the year: the Helsinki Festival, Flow Festival, Art Goes Kapakka, Espoo April Jazz, Vantaa Baroque festival, and Lahti Sibelius Festival, as well as the Love and Anarchy, DocPoint and Espoo Ciné film festivals.

 

Design will be the 2012 theme at many museums, including the Design Museum, Museum of Finnish Architecture, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki City Art Museum in Tennispalatsi and Meilahti, Emma Museum of Modern Art in Espoo, Lahti Art Museum, and the Finnish Science Centre Heureka.