Kaisa Luukkanen I live in Helsinki and I study furniture and interior design at the University of Art and Design Helsinki (UIAH). My roots are very strongly in the North. I was born in 1979 in Yli-Ii by the beautiful Ii river in the midst of the quiet northern nature. Besides my studies, I work in my own company. Design Office Studio Kaisa Luukkanen was established in 2005. I work widely in fields from visual arts to product design. In addition to furniture and product design, I practice graphic design as well as restoration and other special paint commissions. For example, my recent project is the faux painting of S/S ”Leppävirta”. For the time being I am planning a large environmental art project. Working between different art forms and projects feeds one each other in the most surprising ways. As a designer, I observe the world through shapes, forms, dimensions and colours. Self-expression in addition to the visual and experienced environment have always been important to me and my design work is connected to these matters. I aim at a controlled and functional wholeness and poetical form. I would like to create intellectual objects though delicacy of forms. However, my starting point is that an object should be an article of necessity. There should also be a possibility that objects would contribute to a better world, for example towards a more ecological and comfortable world. I am inspired by various cultural phenomenon and technical developments and often also by beautiful, significant words with good linguistic instinct like ”earthair” (i.e. ”maailma”, the Finnish word for ”world”) and ”morning twilight” or ”dawn”. In my design process, I go looking for new tasks very spirited. I look for new materials and ways of processing these. The form is found through the nature of the material itself. It feels natural to work with 3D models from the very first sketches as I study forms, functions and esthetics. I rarely start a job by a plain drawing. Very often I have a clear goal and vision at the very beginning of the project. Sometimes it is quite abstract. During the design process I try to find the means or the right materials and working processes in order to achieve the final outcome. My passion outside the art and design world is long jogging sessions and hiking in the nature, and cats! I admire their intelligence and independence as well as their controlled movements and skill of complete relaxation.