Helsinki - world design capital 2012It should not come as a surprise that I'm a bit partial when it comes to describing Helsinki. Helsinki, after all, is the town where I was born and where I have spent most of my life. This does not, of course, mean that I see everything in a positive light. On the contrary, I have lived in some of the suburbs with high unemployment rates and social problems usually connected with unemployment and poverty. Thus I might equally well guide your way to some suburban bar with unemployed and poor customers drunken early in the morning. In case you are more interested in seeing the trendy World Design Captial 2012 than the life of ordinary Finns, you should certainly stay in the city centre. Even there, you'll probably see some glimpses of social unequality. As is the case in most capital areas in the world, the people in the city centre are more likely to belong to the wealthy strata of the society. But if you take some of the local trains or the underground and find yourself let us say 5-10 kilometres from the city centre, you'll most probably find yourself in an area built in 1960s or 1970s that was the period of real urbanization in Finland. Nowadays, some of these suburbs are populated by a growing immigrant population: there you might hear Russian, Arabic or Somali language almost equally probably as Finnish. | In this year, Helsinki is the World Design Capital. Interestingly, this has not received much local press coverage lately. On the contrary, in this January the public discussion and debate regarding design and culture in Finland has been centered on the plan to build a new Guggenheim museum in the Helsinki city centre. Even without Guggenheim museum, there are several interesting museums for any art or design lover planning to visit Helsinki. The most interesting of this are, in my humble opinion, the Kiasma museum for modern art and the Museum for Design. You should certainly visit at least one of these two if you plan to stay here for a couple of days. |