Toshiyuki Kita to be the curator of Habitare’s EcoDesign special exhibition
The fifth international EcoDesign special exhibition will be held this autumn in conjunction with the Habitare fair at the Helsinki Exhibition and Convention Centre, from 18 to 22 September 2013. The Japanese industrial designer Toshiyuki Kita has been invited to be the exhibition’s curator and chair of the jury.
Kita works in both Japan and Italy. He has designed many hit products for German, Italian and Japanese manufacturers. Kita’s clients include Sharp, Mitsubishi, Cassina, Moroso, Magis, Stile Life, Interprofile, Miz, Minerva, Vaner Furniture and Ms System. He also designs traditional Japanese handicrafts.
Kita’s designs have been included in the collections of museums around the world, including the MoMA in New York and the Pompidou Centre in Paris. He has had two exhibitions in Helsinki, in 1992 and in 1999.
Top international designers and young up-and-coming talent from Finland and abroad will be invited to the EcoDesign exhibition. Designs will be curated, and some 50 entries that fulfil the eligibility criteria will be chosen for presentation at the exhibition. The architecture of the exhibition will be by a team of design students at the Aalto University, led by Professor Jouko Järvisalo.
This year, as last year, the theme of the exhibition will be wood as a material. The designers’ brief is to create and present wooden pieces of furniture and interior design articles, or new, insightful and necessary commercial wood-based solutions. The entries must be made of 80% wood and 20% some other environmentally friendly material.
EcoDesign exhibition curators from previous years include Kristiina Lassus, Konstantin Grcic, Ingo Maurer and Yrjö Kukkapuro.
At the exhibition opening, the designer or designer group whose creation best meets the set criteria will be awarded a €5,000 prize donated by the Finnish Fair Foundation. The exhibition is produced by Jari Pirhonen from the advertising agency Valo, and organised by the Finnish Fair Corporation.
More information on the EcoDesign exhibition:
Advertising agency Valo, exhibition producer Jari Pirhonen, tel. +358 50 525 7062, mailto:mail@mainostoimistovalo.fi, www.ecodesign.fi
More information on the Habitare fair:
The Finnish Fair Corporation, communications officer Tuula Sipilä, tel. +358 40 450 3173, tuula.sipila@finnexpo.fi
Habitare, the largest furniture, interior decoration and design fair in Finland, will take place from 18 to 22 September 2013. The event offers everything for the interior design and function of homes and public spaces. The previous Habitare fair in September 2012 attracted nearly 60,000 visitors, of which 17,000 were professionals.
www.habitare.fi
Habitare press images: http://mediabank.finnexpo.fi