Habitare Talents
Habitare Talents 2024 – showcasing the four most interesting names in design right now
Habitare Talents 2024 highlights four young designers whose work reflects the worlds of future forms, materials and techniques. The insightful works of Tatu Laakso, Lotta Maija, Riikka Peltola and Eemeli Sahimaa are a breath of fresh air in a new design that is still being talked about. Each designer in the group already has their own recognisable style and inventive ways of expressing through design what is happening in the world right now and what kind of lifestyles we are experiencing.
“The designers selected for Habitare Talents represent a broad spectrum of the design field, each with their own strong area of expertise and material know-how. They share an active spirit of making, as well as a reflective and in-depth approach to their own working process,” say Elina Aalto and Saara Renvall of Imu Design.
Imu Design is responsible for curating and producing the Habitare Talents exhibition. The exhibition jury also includes Habitare’s creative lead Päivi Helander and a non-permanent member, the designer Rasmus Palmgren, who was featured in Habitare’s Talentshop exhibition in 2019.
Tatu Laakso
Tatu Laakso is a designer and interior architect, with degrees from the Lahti Institute of Design and Aalto University. In his work, he focuses on furniture design, especially serially produced furniture and its environmental sustainability. Tatu favours natural materials and strives to find a balance between a distinctive design idiom, usability and durability. An appreciation of nature is an inbuilt value for him and something that he applies to his work. Tatu’s design is driven by a hands-on approach, through which he strives for a thorough understanding of materials, forms, and manufacturing methods. With his characteristic insightful use of materials and an elegant design idiom, he creates comfort and harmony, striving for deep and regenerative connections between the user, materials and objects.
Lotta Maija
Lotta Maija is a Helsinki-based illustrator and visual designer whose work focuses on the world of colours and shapes. You can see her cheerful style glowing in her colourful floral and fruit illustrations and patterns, which have found their way into the ranges of companies in both Finland and abroad. After a period of working and studying in Tokyo, Lotta has been influenced by Japanese aesthetics, solidifying her own personal style. Lotta begins her work process by making sketches using markers or gouache paints, and she finishes her works digitally. She is fascinated by the one-dimensional representation of three-dimensional shapes and by playing with colours. Lotta Maija graduated as a Master of Arts from the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture in 2017. She currently works as a textile designer at Marimekko.
Riikka Peltola
Riikka Peltola is a fashion designer who graduated from Aalto University in 2020 and who works by knitting and crocheting. Her relationship with textiles and their fibres has emerged through the use of both industrial machines and her own hands. Riikka’s background as a fashion designer becomes evident as she creates spaces and shapes using yarn. The layers of time and memory are visible in the materials she uses. Riikka is interested in how the lives of materials and individuals are linked to history, and how the past and the present intertwine in objects. Her work centres around how materials adapt to the environment and how they are linked to the earth.
Eemeli Sahimaa
Eemeli Sahimaa is an independent designer and carpenter who approaches design through various themes. Reflection and questioning feature prominently in his emotion-driven but hands-on approach to his work. Key themes include understanding the essence of design, craft and artistic practice, and finding meanings. His work is driven and given structure by the need to explore and experiment. Eemeli’s characteristic curiosity has pushed him to experiment with a variety of materials and techniques. He is just as enthusiastic about technical details as he is about carving wooden figurines. According to him, playful tinkering ultimately produces the most interesting results.
