Design machines

As I wrote earlier, it was a surprise for me that the ice hockey world championship games were hosted in Helsinki. I was equally surprised when I saw the construction work of European athletics championship at Helsinki Senate Square - are we hosting those as well? Obviously I'm not the primary target group when marketing sports events, since these Helsinki sports events keep coming as a surprise to me.

The Helsinki happening that I haven't missed is the World Design Capital year. I've spotted WDC logos, ads and events everywhere. But that's ok, I feel I belong to the primary target group of WDC fuzz. To be honest, I think the WDC marketing has been even a bit too active, I think they've tried to put word "design" into places where it doesn't belong to.

Anyway, today I visited HI Design exhibition at Kaapelitehdas. The exhibition is part of the WDC and it presented design, industrial art and wonderful Finnish machines. There were automatic forklifts, nice elevators, new tram, building automation system running on solar power, the device history of Nokia phones, etc.



There was also an armored vehicle. I believe for many Finns it is perfectly normal to present a tank as a crown jewel of Finnish design. But I can also imagine that armored vehicles in general may not be 100% politically correct piece of design in some other cultures. Well, in some cultures you don't consider tractors either as top design - but we do.



The exhibition is free, and it's open from Thursday to Sunday, 10 am to 6 pm until September 2nd.