Forest love

This holiday season, Artek Helsinki collaborated with a couple of creatives who were asked to share their views and memories about forest. I was happy to share mine, since we have been such a forest family over the past years. 

I try to find a forest wherever we go – Tokyo, New York, California, northern Italy, even Naples – and usually succeed. I don’t consider myself particularly outdoorsy, and I never have the perfect hiking clothing with me, I just want to get out in nature and breathe. The dog loves it too.

I also wrote about my love for trees and wood – a material that is at the core of the Artek heritage. Who knows what modern architecture and interior design would look like without Alvar Aalto’s influence. He rejected man-made materials such as tubular steel and chose to work with organic forms and wood.

In the 1920’s, Aalto began collaborating with carpenter Otto Korhonen and spent years developing techniques for bending wood. The innovation that enabled serial production of the classic Aalto stool legs was patented in the 1930’s.

You can read the story in Finnish here and the English translation here. The story is illustrated with images I shot in our home, featuring some of my favorite pieces from Artek’s selection.