Yrjö Kukkapuro

The Finnish furniture designer Yrjö Kukkapuro (b. 1933) is a central figure of Finnish functionalism. Kukkapuro has been working as a freelance designer since the 1950s and much of the furniture he designed at the beginning of his career is still in production.

These days Yrjö Kukkapuro designs mostly for the company Avarte. His most famous pieces of furniture are the Karuselli chair, the Saturnus table, the Skaala chair, the Remmi series and the Ateljee lounge chair and sofa. One of Kukkapuro’s favourite sayings is “Does it make any sense to design a chair which is not good to sit on?” and it describes very well the designer’s love for ergonomic furniture. During his career Yrjö Kukkapuro was awarded many national and international prizes – including the Lunning Prize in 1966, the 1^st Prize at the International Chair Design Competition (Italy) in 1972 and the Kaj Franck Design Prize in 1995. His works are present in the permanent collections of various museums in the world – such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the MoMA, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein (Germany), just to name a few.