Design and Peace: Interviews

Participation in the International Aino and Alvar Aalto Design Colloquium with the support of Alvar Aalto Foundation in Finland. The colloquium took place in the summer of 2019 during a period of two days and was held at the town hall in Säynätsalo which lies in the very heart of Finland. This town hall (1949–1952) was designed by Alvar Aalto and is beautifully situated on an island in Lake Päijänne which is a part of the municipality of Jyväskylä. “…It has been a remarkable summer for the foundation and we’ve done some wonderful things in many different locations. The International Aino and Alvar Aalto Design Colloquium in June was a new kind of challenge for the events team. Design seminars have a his- tory that started already in 1995 when the first design seminar Design for Architecture was held in Jyväskylä. Altogether we have had eight (1995–2016) well pre- pared international seminars on design practice and theory. Though they had all been obvious successes there was a lot of talk about whether this kind of large scale public events had come to a critical point? Certainly getting people to travel from all around the world, to come to Finland and participate in a seminar for three days, had become more and more difficult.
When we in the foundation started discussing the next seminar for 2019 we came up with an idea to gather
a small preliminary steering group, to think about new ways to organise an event around design. This group consisted of Nina Heikkonen, Pentti Kareoja, Jukka Savolainen, Ilkka Suppanen and myself. One idea was for it to be invite only, with no audience present. Another idea was to make it a closed circuit colloquium with discussions instead of lectures and workshops. The third new idea was to make a book about it during the colloquium. Eventually the steering group was extended with Marko Ahtisaari, Paola Antonelli, Heli Leinonkoski and Suvi Saloniemi. (…) I also want to thank all members of the steering group for their generous way of using their time and effort to make the event as good as it was and the City of Jyväskylä for its major contribution.” [Tommi Lindh CEO / Alvar Aalto Foundation]

In: The International Aino and Alvar Aalto Design Colloquium 2019, Säynätsalo, Finland. (Org.). Design and Peace:. 1ed.Helsinki: Alvar Aalto Foundation, 2019, v. 1, p. 95-97.

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