Joanna Laajisto, star of Finnish internalism: "I defend a design that can be paid"
As the traditional design of your country, its lamps, armchairs or homes mix serenity with contemporaneity and subtlety with quality.Author of some of Helsinki's most select bars, has ceased to be the great local promise to export the Finland brand around the world.
Anatxu ZabalbeascoaInterior tell people in the same way that buildings dialogue with the city."Especially in a time of digital purchases, one must feel welcomed in a trade to enter without being hurried or without feeling intimidated," she says.Comfort is a quality that emerges more than touch than from sight.This well -being in stores, restaurants, offices and, of course, in homes is the seal of Joanna LaAjisto (Helsinki, 43 years old), the ascending star of Finnish design who, after being chosen best interior designer by the Association of Architects of hiscountry culminates its international takeoff.What does she do so special?
"It is not the nostalgia of forms, it is the desire of what endures," he explains. An interior that remains over time is a rare Avis. It is not a secret that in businessmen's calculations stores and restaurants are born with an expiration date. Most profit from their investment in interior design within a period that does not exceed the decade. This makes that architecture very frequently more thought to impact than to last. However, the Jara has another way of building unforgettable spaces: he makes them cozy. It is so strange that a trade remains that when he achieves it, he becomes himself a cultural attraction. Let's think about the jewelry stores Hans Hollein raised at Vienna recorden in the seventies. Or in the American Bar of Adolf Loos since the beginning of the 20th century in that same street that occupied the old Austrian pit. The Loewe's store in Gran Vía speaks in Madrid the same language as the warehouses La Samaritaine in Paris: that of eternity. For the AU, who lives in Helsinki, the restaurant of the Savoy Hotel - which inaugurated Alvar and Aino Aalto in 1937 - does not represent that time: it has been out of time. And although Ilse Crawford "refresca" - as he said - two years ago, in the Bistró they know that they serve as many meals for their design as for their dishes. For that bar, Alvar Aalto devised his mythical lake shaders - which are manufactured in different heights - and Aino Aalto designed an unforgettable comfortable and practical dishes at the same time. Sobriety, pragmatism and closeness to nature then defined the essence of Finnish design, which in this last five years directly competes with its Swedish neighbor in the Scandinavian creative line.
Born and raised on the wooded periphery of Helsinki, today Joanna LaAjisto lives in the center of the capital in a centenary floor that conditioned her, her husband and two daughters.She has lived there since 2008, when she decided to leave Los Angeles - where she worked for five years - and return to her city to be a mother and form her own business."I thought it would be easier to make my role as a mother with my designer work in Helsinki, where they have been supporting the incorporation of women into the world of work, than in Los Angeles," she explains.She was not wrong.After dedicating two years to the care of her daughters, she opened a study in the city center.She ran the year 2010. Eight years later, the Association of Finnish Architects recognized her as an interior designer of the year.She today has eight employees and she exports the serene, elegant and timeless design of her to Germany, France and Spain.She has become the great Finnish designer.How did she get here?
The Jara began exploring: "I made it a young girl when Helsinki was a place with few options and with my friends I was traveling to Stockholm on weekends to see fashion, bars, life." The designer remembers an austere city that marked the little wasteful character of the inhabitants. "It is not that we are now against excessive consumption, we take it in the DNA, so I defend an equitable design: something that can be paid." She as a child was very athlete. And creative. As a teenager, she began to compete in Snowboard and went to California to study. She would stay almost a decade. First, she attending a High School - where she chose dance and theater. Then, studying at the School of Interior Design of Southern California. It was there that she became an interior designer. During a five -year she worked in Los Angeles for the giant of commercial architecture Grupo Genser. “I learned to be effective and to try and challenge the materials. The budgets were high and it could be done, ”she recalls. But the most important thing she assimilated in Los Angeles was that, in the digital age, who moves to a store has to be well received and want to stay. More than inviting to dream, her interior design seeks to invite to stay.
He was 30 years old when he decided to return. And 35 when he began to sign the most unique bars in the capital. For the Wild Herb Cafe he combined concrete without ending a plant invasion. For ox, corrugated steel painted green with red marbles. In the Jackie, in Helsinki, one feels relive the glamor of the forties. Has the designer of the moment became strong with nostalgia? “If everything works in a place, one barely fixes, but he does feel that he is comfortable. I design only what is needed, I do not look for change for change; When a shape or a material is friendlier, I turn to him, ”she says. And among the most friendly - or those with the easiest coexistence and maintenance - defends the solid woods, the colors that do not bore, "so they should not be imposed or seen too much", and the furniture that accompanies you: the shelves that facilitate the order or the lamps that do not dazzle. After signing the Cecil stores in Oberhausen, in Germany, or the restaurant of the Finnish Institute in Paris, a lamp has brought Joanna LaAjisto to Spain. Or, rather, she has made Spain reach her. The businessman Javier Marset says that he met her in Barcelona and admired the elegance with which she was able to embody values such as sustainability or equity. This lamp manufacturer decided to visit her in Helsinki and there he was in love with the luminaire that hangs on her meeting table. The Jara has posed precisely with her for this report.
The exquisite is to go unnoticed, the opposite of being noticed.It demands an extraordinary effort, but achieves a very long life period.In Marset they developed the Ihana lamp, which in Finland means exquisite.In the Barcelona workshops they improved their light quality, added light regulation with a DIM that can offer more warmth and more intensity.They also produced 14 different models: they turned the lamp into a light system capable of installing up to 14 screens.From table luminaire to commerce lighting, hotels or offices."It was an arrow," Marset summarizes.Talk about the lamp.Ihana has marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration: the Spanish company works with the Austle in the remodeling of the mythical Runo Hotel, in the Finnish town of Porvoo.
Finland is European Japan. There the technology is tip; Education, excellent; The traditions, simple, and respect for landscape and nature, more everyday than reverential. Of course, to the density of the Japanese cities the land of the Austle opposes abundance of lakes and birch. The pop point, beyond Santa Claus's red clothes, puts Marimekko's prints, and although Finnish austerity is the opposite of Japanese consumerism, both coincide in a determining feature: subtlety is a civic value. In cities there is nature. And it is respected even if it is not fenced. The tram coexists with the bicycles in Helsinki, and many museums and shops do not open until twelve in the morning because there are decades ago, most women and the unemployment index are less than 3%. That is: there are no buyers for stores for a good part of the morning. In the neighborhoods, and also in the center, libraries are like communal living rooms, and the adjective that best summarizes the interior of the houses is not seen but feels: warm. Precisely because they spend half a year with very little light, the houses are bright, they look for the sun, they shelter the nature that grows on the radiators and next to the windows. That happens in the Villa Rauhanniemi that the Jaraxist devised in Karjalohja, south of her country. In the kitchen of that house he also poses for this report.
In homes and floors of full Finland it is common for a single dishes. And it is also that the jugs, the dishes and even the salvamantels are of the handful of their most international brands (Iittala, Artak or Marimekko) that this country has exported for decades. That is why in Finland, modernity is inherited. One completes the glassware he inherited from his mother. And those vessels are not saved for one day a year: they are used daily. Many young people buy the bowls that Aino Aalto devised to Iittala because, in addition to beautiful, not be very expensive and have been out of time, they are practical: they can be stored within the other and occupy little space. In that framework it is where Joanna Laojisto works. She has traveled the world to digest her culture. And she has learned from her teachers to design thinking about nature, not only as decoration, also not to damage her waste. The JUST KNOWS How to live comfortably in the city. Also to be out of time.
Normas
