Helsinki Design Week will take place 8–17 September 2023 around the city and online. 

The largest design festival in the Nordics presents over hundred events in architecture and design. The festival offers exhibitions, parties, sales events, open doors, fashion shows and much more for both city dwellers as well as design professionals. The ticket sales begins on 14 June. This is also when the full programme will be launched. Most of the events are free.

HDW’s Main Exhibition tackles changes in work and living spaces – The unique main location at Merikortteli offers a Talks programme and inspiring encounters for both professionals and wider audiences. 

In the main venue of the festival on the 6th floor of the Merikortteli block, the good everyday life will be addressed in the form of an exhibition, a discussion series and workshops. Completed between the years 1919 and 1934, this industrial block of houses encompasses a rich history which makes it an ideal setting for presenting the future ways of life, living and working. The temporary design exhibition will be built in existing urban premises full of stories to both inspire and pursue sustainability.

Editor in Chief of the Asun magazine Ulla Koskinen is the head curator of the exhibition, and Lauri Johansson is in charge of its architecture. Innovative material solutions, inspiring collaborations and more will be displayed by dozens of exhibitors, including Artek & Juslin Maunula, Interface, Johanna Gullichsen, Balmuir, Woven works, Tulikivi, Mölinä, Fasetti and Skanno. 

In addition to the Main Exhibition, the top floor of the building will host a varied Talks Programme for both professionals and wider audiences. The Let Me Wine Bar x HDW, where you can listen to the Talks or just reflect upon the experiences gained at HDW over a glass of wine, will also open above the city roofs for the duration of the event. The full Talks Programme can be found here. 

The Talks programme will include the winner of the Helsinki Design Award granted by Helsinki Design Week together with the city of Helsinki. This year, the winner, who will be announced at the opening of the main exhibition, will represent the best of design education in Helsinki.

You can tune into the new, rebellious edge of design on Merikortteli’s ground floor, where the spaces will be taken over by, among others, Aalto University students from different fields. Processuality and incompleteness are an intrinsic part of creative work and at the core of design. Open discussion, a nurturing dialogue and the collision of new discoveries with familiar structures are an integral part of HDW’s operations, which will become visible on the ground floor of the Main Exhibition. On view will be prototypes and installations from emerging creators in the fields of interior architecture and lighting. Works from the Imagine Everyday – Outsider Art Finland exhibition, which has also been on view at the Institut Finlandais in Paris, will be displayed. The Feel the fashion! body of content is a working group exhibition aiming to expand the public discussion around fashion.

The main venue of 2023 is Merikortteli in Punavuori. You can learn more here. 
Other important venues are Cable Factory and the Design Museum. 

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