|
  
ELINA AALTO
elina[at]fiaskodesign.com
contact[at]iukbox.com
Better View is manufactured and marketed by Iuk Box. |
Better View is a series of perforated black out roller blinds designed by Elina Aalto. Light seeps in through the small cut out holes creating an image of a city by night. The cut-outs represent the light in the windows of apartment buildings and office complexes in the city. With the Better View blind any dreary view can be turned into an attractive cityscape. The series currently includes views from Helsinki and Tokyo. New additions portraying Stockholm and Paris are in progress. The images represent a selection of cities that Elina has traveled to in the last few years and the photographs are by her. The chosen views are of contrasting cityscapes: skyscrapers in Tokyo, 60s modernism in Helsinki and 19th century architecture in Paris.
Each roller blind is custom made by hand. The material used is vinyl-coated polyester. The width of the blind can vary between one and two meters (3 ́3” and 6’6”). The Better View blind has previouly been on display at the Future Perfect Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn during the New York Design Week 2006.
The idea for the blind was inspired by an art piece that Elina saw in the Oslo Art Museum. It was a large portrait made by perforating the canvas and it was hung on the wall like a regular painting. Elina thought that it was a pity that it was not hung so that light could come in through the holes. Elina Aalto's designs often combine practicality with decidedly artistic qualities. She gets her inspiration from both fine arts and everyday observations and experiences. In design, she aspires to strike a balance between an innovative approach and the longevity of the end product. The idea of creating disposable objects feels foreign to her.
Elina Aalto is a young designer living and working in Helsinki. She graduated from the University of Art and Design Helsinki in 2000 with a degree in spatial and furniture design and has since worked both independently in her own studio and together with a group of two other designers known as Fiasko on a wide variety of projects ranging from interior design to exhibitions, writing for the Muoto design magazine and teaching at her former university. In 2006, Elina’s giant outdoor oriental carpet in Arabianranta, Helsinki was awarded the prize of the Best Environmental Art Work of the Year. The piece is a mosaic of pink and turquoise tiles that forms a 66 m2 (710 square feet) Persian inspired “rug” in the inner courtyard of an apartment building complex in the Arabianranta area where all contractors constructing new buildings are required to allocate one to two per cent of their building budget to commission community art.
Elina is also one of the three founding members of IMU, Finland’s self-appointed National Design Team representing young Finnish and Helsinki-based designers in international exhibitions around the world and working as a mediator between young designers and the general public. IMU is an independent organization, which aims at facilitating the transition from a student of design to a professional designer by giving young designers a chance to exhibit their work and show their talent. IMU represents the future of Finnish design, offering fresh ideas from emerging designers. The works for each individual show are chosen by a jury consisting of more established Finnish designers. The coordinators Elina Aalto, Krista Kosonen and Saara Renvall find this a way to keep the organizational structure light and to guarantee openness as new designers flow in to replace the older ones who are becoming more established on their own.
Summary in Finnish |
