The curved roof of Kukkapuro Home in Kauniainen, Finland, shelters the previous studio and residential of its creators, designer Yrjö Kukkapuro and his visible artist spouse Irmeli. Their daughter, Isa Kukkapuro-Enbom tells ICON the story of this distinctive area devoted to creativity
Pictures by Niclas Mäkelä
Phrases by Anna-Kaisa Huusko
‘The home was conceived as a studio that was additionally a residing area. Precisely that means round. This was not a house with an added workspace,’ explains Isa Kukkapuro-Enbom, daughter of iconic furnishings designer Yrjö Kukkapuro.
Yrjö – who was born in 1933 in Viipurin maalaiskunta, a former Finnish municipality that’s now a part of Russia – and Irmeli Kukkapuro (1934-2022) had been one in all Finland’s most celebrated architect-designer {couples} of the golden technology. They constructed their studio, Kukkapuro Home, within the small Finnish city of Kauniainen within the late Sixties.
Devoted to the pair’s artistic work – Yrjö the legendary designer maybe finest recognized for his ergonomic Karuselli chair (1964) and Irmeli a profitable visible artist – their new dwelling was nestled on a lush backyard plot subsequent to the massive villa belonging to Irmeli’s mother and father.
The couple, of their thirties on the time, had dreamed of transferring right into a loft residence initially – a well-liked development amongst creatives throughout the Sixties, particularly in New York’s Decrease Manhattan, the place artists would flip former industrial buildings into vibrant live-work houses. Many had acquired previous industrial areas and reimagined them into modern studios and flats.
Pictures by Niclas Mäkelä
When an appropriate area for the studio couldn’t be present in Finland, nevertheless, the Kukkapuros determined to construct one in all their very own. In a means, the home was a novel loft of types too – one which was full of sketches, design treasures and mementos that informed the couple’s vibrant life story.
The pair acquired a monetary push to construct the home when Yrjö received the esteemed Lunning Prize in 1966. Considered the Nobel Prize of Scandinavian design, it supported gifted Nordic craftspeople and industrial designers by offering them with a chance to obtain worldly recognition. Profitable the prize helped Yrjö make a mark on this planet of design globally, and upon receiving the award, he spent half of the prize cash on an extended journey overseas, whereas he saved the opposite half as an funding for the constructing mission.
In mathematical phrases, Kukkapuro Home is a hyperbolic paraboloid. In apply which means the constructing has no straight corners. The floorplan of the studio resembles a bloated triangle. The roof has a wavy and bent form and virtually appears prefer it’s suspended within the air.
When building work began in 1968, Yrjö referred to as upon structural engineer and shut buddy Eero Paloheimo to offer the plans and power calculations for the house. Additionally answerable for designing the home’s recognisable wavy roof and its skinny concrete construction (the thickness varies between 8 and 15cm), Paloheimo performed an necessary position in realising lots of Yrjö’s visionary concepts.
Pictures by Niclas Mäkelä
Three carpenters constructed the picket mould from planks for the casting of the roof on website, explains Kukkapuro-Enbom. ‘Yrjö and Irmeli had been nervous when the casting was completed, and the mould might lastly be eliminated. Nevertheless it turned out nice. Although the construction was purely experimental, it has endured over 55 years,’ she says.
After the casting, the roof building was self-supporting, and rested on the muse on its three corners, which had been anchored to the bottom with a metal construction. Lastly, a layer of polyurethane was sprayed on the underside of the concrete floor.
The partitions and home windows had been added subsequent. As Yrjö needed to create light-filled areas linked to the encircling panorama and nature, the constructing has an abundance of window floor and options quite a lot of supplies, together with metal, glass and hardboard. The fashionable materials palette is additional enhanced by a daring color scheme that pulls on Piet Mondrian’s restricted palette of main hues.
The inside is one single, steady area. The home, at roughly 200 sq m, has no partitions – not even within the bed room. It’s ‘a single room for each working and residing’, Yrjö Kukkapuro wrote in 2008. The constructing might have a dynamic look, however on the within, it has an virtually cave-like cosy atmosphere.
Pictures by Niclas Mäkelä
Whereas the lavatory and bathe have their very own spherical “capsules” manufactured from fibreglass, even these are barely translucent. The one time the home had inside partitions was when daughter Isa was a youngster and craved some privateness. ‘They constructed me a bit of nook of my very own, however Yrjö took it down as quickly as I moved away from dwelling’, she says.
All through the colourful dwelling, Irmeli and Yrjö’s work gear, completed plans and distinctive artwork dominate the area. Irmeli, recognized for her vibrant artwork prints and work, sourced a set of attention-grabbing and shocking objects that sparked her inspiration. Yrjö, a grasp of ergonomics, designed many high quality chairs all through his life, that are dotted all through the inside.
On the time of completion, the studio was virtually empty. Nonetheless, after 5 work-filled many years, the area has stuffed up with Yrjö Kukkapuro’s prototypes, experiments and furnishings that has made it into manufacturing. From easy fashions of his Fifties Moderno sequence to the long-lasting Karuselli and Saturnus plastic chairs of the Sixties, to the Nineteen Seventies Fysio sequence of seating, recognized for its ergonomic qualities, to the colorful Experiment sequence of the Eighties – the studio is a treasure trove of Finnish design.
Pictures by Niclas Mäkelä
The constructing was created for the work-filled way of life of two artistic folks. It was not till 1993 that the Kukkapuros separated work and leisure, after they constructed a purely residential home designed by Pekka Salminen on the opposite facet of the backyard. Kukkapuro Home, nevertheless, continues to face for example of futuristic, free- kind structure; Yrjö embraced a brand new aesthetic, not seen in Finland earlier than, and, very like his experimental furnishings designs and postmodern artwork, each mission he undertook solely displayed extra creativity than the one earlier than.
Kukkapuro Home is a fruits of the Sixties utopian views of the long run: pop artwork colors are scattered all through, and the studio’s format options massive, open areas. Breaking the conventions of residing and structure, the constructing supplied a recent view on a artistic way of life. ‘This was a utopia, a human experiment of its time,’ says Kukkapuro-Enbom. ‘This area was created to feed creativity.’
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