“For some, peeling paint on an interior door is beautiful, whereas some instantly put it on their list of things to fix,” says Design Stories columnist Hanna-Katariina Mononen, challenging conventional thinking.
QUITE A FEW SELF-APPOINTED master builders have visited my home and said “You sure have your work cut out for you”, to which I have replied, surprised by the comment, “It’s almost finished”. There are so many unwritten rules and assumptions about what we should do and in what way we should do it – and what standards we should aim to meet. Similar assumptions, rules and conventional ways of doing things also apply to life itself but have the tendency of materializing in the form of, for example, doors in the context of home and interior design.
For some, peeling paint on an interior door is beautiful, whereas some instantly put it on their list of things to fix. We all have internalized the prevailing standards for modernization and interior design solutions and sometimes even believe them to be right against our better judgement. However, in my opinion, there should be more room for questioning common ways of thinking, for patina and – above all – for rethinking things.
“It’s incredibly exhilarating to visit homes created by various visionaries in the fields of design and architecture, embodying outside-the-box thinking.”
It’s incredibly exhilarating to visit homes created by various visionaries in the fields of design and architecture, embodying outside-the-box thinking. When looking around in such places, you cannot help but challenge your own fixed ideas of what, for example, a kitchen should look like. What, then, could it look like? Even though the kitchen is just a room where we cook, we often end up making conventional decisions when furnishing it. What if the toilet and bathroom were located in fiberglass cylinders in the middle of the apartment, like in the studio of Yrjö Kukkapuro? Or, could exteriors be more like the playful arrangement of various materials on the Muuratsalo Experimental House designed by Alvar Aalto?
When it comes to what is considered realistic, my role models are persons renovating old houses as a way of life. For a few years, I lived in a wooden house that was owned by an architect specializing in traditional construction. When I visited the house for the first time, the weathered building looked uninhabited and made me think that the children in the neighborhood might even call it haunted. The house was, however, being gradually renovated in the order of priority, and the renovation process was progressing step by step, with the interior being repaired first. The items in need of renovation had been carefully divided into critical and aesthetic. What was worn yet healthy and functional was allowed to remain as is – or at least patiently wait for its turn.
I recommend: Top Gun: Maverick
“IT’S HERE AFTER – depending on the calculation method – over 30 years of waiting! Top Gun: Maverick has finally premiered. The crème de la crème of summer movies, the sequel to Top Gun, which hit the theaters in 1986, has already received plenty of praise and promisingly high star ratings. The summer starts in the movie theater!”
The author, Hanna-Katariina Mononen, reflects on the issues of a beautiful and sustainable life in her monthly column for Design Stories. She thinks that just like in life, in the home, the most beautiful parts are unplanned – and often relatively ordinary as well.
Text and images: Hanna-Katariina Mononen