Online tour to Iittala glassfactory with designer Harri Koskinen

From 10 to 14 September at 6 p.m.
Daily live streams on Design Museum and Iittala´s Instagram page

The theme of this year’s Helsinki Design Week is wisdom, and we believe that play and creativity are wisdom in its greatest form! With play, we can solve problems: there is creativity in all of us, and it is not something that can be automated. As part of the Helsinki Design Week programme, we offer a series of online events in English, inspired by our current main exhibition, Iittala – Kaleidoscope: From Nature to Culture. The Kaleidoscope events offer a versatile perspective on play and creativity as well as on Finnish glass design. 

The Kaleidoscope Festival will contain five consecutive online events held on the Instagram account of the Design Museum from 10 to 14 September. The five live streams each offer a unique approach to creativity. These events will allow us to explore the Iittala exhibition through the eyes of children, discuss the requirements of creativity with a designer, hear the ideas of Senior Curator Paola Antonelli from MoMA on how design methods can be used to solve problems in the future and view Finnish design from the perspective of the other side of the Atlantic. The Kaleidoscope events will enable you to explore the Iittala factory and its glassmaking workshop brimming with creativity.

The Design Museum’s summer exhibition, Iittala – Kaleidoscope: From Nature to Culture, will be open until 19 September.

Part 1 Harri Koskinen – Glass designers creativity
Friday 10 September at 6 p.m., in English

In the first episode of the festival, we get to peek behind the scenes at the Iittala Glass Factory! Is there room for creativity and experimentation in a glass factory in today’s world? Designer Harri Koskinen meets a seasoned glassblower at the Iittala Glass Factory and they discuss the unique collaborations that take place in the factory’s glassmaking studio, where glass acquires the form of the designer’s vision in the hands of a professional. What kind of things inspire the professionals and what kinds of innovations can emerge from collaboration at its best? In a tour of the factory, we learn about traditional glassmaking and get an insider’s view of the miracle of glassmaking.