In 2021 Helsinki Design Week’s theme is “wisdom”: “What is wise to design now?” and founder and director Kari Korkman explains on the Helsinki Design Week site that both the festival and its visitors benefit from he idea of the changing venues. 

“Each year we look for a new main venue where to invite our exhibitors and visitors. A space that changes annually, offers us always new experiences and interesting views to the city centre. Maintaining the vitality of the city centre is nothing short of wise,” Korkman says on the HDW site. 

Among other things Glasshouse Helsinki will host the festival’s main exhibition called U-joints and more precisely the research project’s fourth chapter called Knots&Knits. As HDW describes it: “initiated with a first show at the 2018 Milano Salone del Mobile in Milan, U-JOINTS is a project by Andrea Caputo and Anniina Koivu that closely looks at the connections in architecture and design”. 

Full agenda of Helsinki Design Week will be published on August 12^th. 

As a sneak preview we are happy to tell you that also the popular Design Market will be organized in GH Aleksi and online. Organized at the Cable Factory since 2005, the largest outlet event in the Nordic countries will now take place on the third and fourth floors of Glasshouse Helsinki, exceptionally from September 10^th to September 12^th. 

Glasshouse Helsinki founder Mirkku Kullberg has described GH Aleksi as a place and a concept that connects people and companies from different backgrounds. Hosting Helsinki Design Week fits that concept perfectly. 

“Glasshouse Helsinki is a meeting place for those working with design, design innovation, fashion, style, arts and local crafts. For everybody who shares our vision on the importance of assuming responsibility. It is a store and a medium at the same time, and it wants to reach audiences together with the operators,” Mirkku Kullberg says. 

“Glasshouse believes that it is now more important than ever for design, art, research, architecture and public and private companies to sit down together and find solutions to the environmental crisis that is developing around us at an increasing pace. We are all part of the answers”, she says.

Kullberg calls Helsinki Design Week “an influencer in this field, taking a stand and looking forward.”

“In the world of Glasshouse Helsinki, HDW represents the encounter of thinking and co-creation”, Kullberg says.

In 2021 Helsinki Design Week will be held from September 9th to September 19th.