An interview with Finnish designer Yrjö Kukkapuro
Dense rows of firs, punctuated by frozen lakes and oxblood-red cottages; children in snowshoes navigating icy sidewalks; crystal-tipped grass that crunches underfoot. A trip to Yrjö Kukkapuro’s studio on the outskirts of Helsinki is suitably Finnish.
But once you get inside, all the Nordic clichés stop. Rows of chairs with colorful legs and graffiti-splattered backs are stacked in seemingly random groups; books, brushes, sketches and models occupy all surfaces; the sunlit walls are full of pictures and clips, and in the middle of it all sits Kukkapuro in his canary yellow cap.
Yrjö Kukkapuro in his studio
Yrjö Kukkapuro Kauniainen in his studio, photographed in February 2020. The unique sofa was painted by his friend Pino Milas in the 1970s
If anyone has a design retrospective that summarizes the artistic movements and global economic changes of the past century, it is Kukkapuro. He graduated as an industrial designer in the 1950s, the golden age of Finnish design thanks to Alvar Aalto, Kaj Franck and the like; he witnessed the plastics revolution of the 1960s, the postmodern rebellion of the 1980s, and the rise of CNC cutting technology in the 1990s—and embraced them all. In the 1990s, he saw his production move to China and found fame there since the 2000s, taking advantage of the digital revolution and the onset of globalization. Each new decade furthers his reputation and strengthens his legacy as one of the great masters of modern design.
“Creating a bestseller is a dream” – Yrjö Kukkapuro
Almost every school, doctor’s office, museum and airport in Finland has once had Kukkapuro chairs. Some still do. The reading room on the second floor of Helsinki Central Library Oodi, completed in 2018 by ALA architects, has his CNC chair and A500 rocking chair; his “Karuselli” and “Moderno” chairs fill the city’s Kaisa library. Kukkapuro is very proud that these live decades after the design. “Creating a bestseller is a dream,” he says.
His daughter Isa sits next to him and guides us through the interview. His only child, she is tasked with documenting all of her father’s work and assembling his archives—currently a pile of papers from a box of files behind her desk. His wife Irmeli, a graphic artist, is tugging at her mood board on the other side of the studio, too sick to paint anymore. His regression has been disastrous. After an hour of conversation, the color has drained from his face, and Kukkapuro apologizes. He needs rest. He gives Irmel a sign and they walk hand in hand to the house next door where they now live. “It’s a very difficult moment,” says Isa.
Left, “A500” lLounge chair prototype, 1985. Right, “Color Experiment” chair prototype, 2016
Yrjö and Irmeli met when they were both students at the Helsinki Ateneum art school and got married in 1956. Kukkapuro studied furniture design and was the only one in the course who knew how to make prototypes. This was due to childhood in Eastern Finland, building boats and bicycles with his father (builder and painter) and sewing with his mother (tailor). After graduating, he founded a workshop, called Moderno, and created a series of sofa beds, beds and couches in a typically Nordic style. The Moderno series was the result of an architect’s commission to create a chair and ottoman for a new shoe store in Helsinki. Over the years, this grew to six pieces and became Kukkapuro’s breakthrough collection. It is still manufactured by Lepo Product in Finland and Avarte in China.
“Sitting in Kukkapuro’s chair is like therapy,” says Juhani Lemmetti, Kukkapuro’s collector and gallery Lemmetti in Helsinki. “He designs with the lower back in mind.” Kukkapuro recalls that it was the lecture on ergonomics that influenced his approach. “It made me see that there was a physiological and scientific dimension to furniture making, and that’s been a part of everything I’ve done ever since.” This obsession with posture, comfort and the body means that fine-tuning a chair can take years.
While researching his Carousel Chair, Kukkapuro wrapped himself in chicken wire, cast his body in a resting position, sculpted around it until he was satisfied with its shape, and then built a prototype out of fiberglass. As a result of four years of experimentation, the Karuselli chair was put into production in 1964 and was an immediate success. Terence Conran praised it as the most comfortable chair he’s ever sat in, and it’s still in production with Finnish manufacturer Artek.
Yrjö Kukkapuro’s studio with a curved concrete roof on the outskirts of Helsinki was built by the designer and his wife Irmeli in 1968.
Irmeli has also always been a “good test model”. He is smaller than me, so we can compare how the chair feels,” says Kukkapuro.
“But it’s always been important for me to be around him, to see colors his way.” The couple built a studio with a concrete roof in 1968 on the plot of land given to them by Irmel’s father and have worked side by side together for 52 years.
Nowhere was Irmel’s contribution more valuable than the 1980s Experiment collection, a series of birch plywood and steel chairs, tables and sofas with armrests and legs in bold colors. Kukkapuro saw it as a reflection on “decorative functionalism” and welcomed postmodernism as a happy break from the functional workspace trends of the 1970s.
Kukkapuro is sitting in the ‘Karuselli’ lounge chair
Since 2015, Kukkapuro has collaborated with Lemmet to create a limited edition of two chairs and a table for the new ‘Color Experiment’ series. Lemmetti has been collecting Kukkapuro chairs for 30 years and has collected more than 40 prototypes, experimental and production pieces. ‘Yrjö thinks about everything – form, function, ergonomics, color. He is imaginative, but also practical. For me, he is one of the most important designers in the world,” he says. The fourth ‘Color Experiment’ chair will be released this spring at the gallery, and with so many prototypes in stock, it’s not hard to imagine future collaborations.
In the middle of the studio is a unique three-seat sofa painted with a mountain landscape. It is the result of the chaotic visit of Pino Milas in 1972 graphic design a guy, in need of some R&R, that Kukkapuro commissioned to decorate it. Life in the studio was unusual. Friends, assistants and collaborators came and went constantly. Father’s bedroom was a small annex to the small kitchen; Kukkapuro and Irmeli slept in a separate bed behind the bookcase, and the bathrooms had two fiberglass ones with shower heads. Kukkapuro won many awards, and foreign trips to lectures and exhibitions were also common; the three of them once piled into their Mini Clubman, packed the tent in the trunk and hit the road for four months.
A prototype called “Simple” chair is on a wheel (we are its first audience). It’s shipped from China and is the first version of what Kukkapuro hopes will be “the world’s simplest chair.” It has a black leather seat, black plywood back and steel frame and looks suitably straightforward. Kukkapuro walks around it, shaking his head. It’s a bit too tall and he thinks the steel arms might look nicer in ash. It goes back to Avartee, who has been producing his songs for 20 years, to edit.
Kukkapuro visited China for the first time in 1997 at the invitation of architect and researcher Fang Hai to give lectures on contemporary design at universities. It was the beginning of a new chapter. There, he worked with master carpenter Yin Hongqian to create the “East West Collection” series of chairs that combine clean lines, lacquered bamboo and Chinese carpentry. These, together with historical pieces produced by Avarte, flooded the Chinese market and Kukkapuro’s fortunes changed.
Original model of Kukkapuro’s ‘Fysio’ office chair, 1976, pressed birch plywood and fabric
Detail of the ‘Color Composition’ chair, 1993
At the same time, Finland was recovering from the recession of the late 1980s, and the domestic focus had shifted to ecological planning. Kukkapuro created a collection of solid wood in the unpopular, forgotten old. It bombed. When he took it to the Berlin fair, a visitor congratulated him on his strong Finnish style. ‘I was devastated. That’s when I thought I was an international designer!’
So when the Helsinki Design Museum invited him in 1993 to create a series of “visually exciting” chairs, Kukkapuro invited his friend, the late Finnish graphic designer Tapani Aartomaa, and together they created the “Tattooed” collection of plywood chairs decorated with bold slogans and eye-catching motifs of trees, dragons and about tigers.
Color also found its way into his “CNC” chairs, designed in 2008 for his retrospective at the museum to celebrate the possibilities of computer-controlled machines. “The idea was to show how effectively technology can be used for materials.” How many chairs has Kukkapuro made in his lifetime? “I don’t know,” he says. ‘About 100? One day I must count them.’ §
Color Composition chair, 1993