‘StayFit’ bench, by Kunsik and Nikari.
The oldest machinery workshop in Finland is in Fiskars, a village of craftspeople and creatives about an hour northwest of Helsinki. This gable-roofed red brick structure, built in 1837, has been home, since 1993, to Nikari, a maker of high-quality sustainable wood products. Its catalogue encompasses some of the most celebrated names in Nordic design – from Alvar Aalto and Kaj Franck to Louise Campbell and Claesson Koivisto Rune. So the addition of a South Korean designer to its roster, for this year’s Wallpaper* Handmade, has been a gamble of sorts.
To say that Kunsik Choi comes from a variegated background would be an understatement. Born in South Korea, he studied industrial design at Politecnico di Milano before returning to Asia for work. A visit to Kitani, a Japanese manufacturer specialising in Nordic design, inspired him to enrol in a three-year cabinetry course at Swedish craft school Capellagården. His graduation project, a dollhouse-like storage system made from 589 pieces of pear, maple and wenge, found its way to the 2016 Stockholm Furniture Fair, where it caught the eye of our interiors director Amy Heffernan, who felt Choi, now based in Malmö, would make an excellent collaborator for Handmade.
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Esta historia es de la edición August 2018 de Wallpaper.
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IN THE ZONE
The San Francisco live-work space of Indian studio Soft-Geometry provides the perfect place to work, rest and play
RISING STAR
The sky's the limit for Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's booming metropolis, where stellar street food, historic alleyways and honking motorbikes now mix with shiny new skyscrapers, minimalist showrooms and upscale patisseries
GOOD MIXER
A site-specific artwork at Hauser Wirth Somerset serves up a cocktail of salvaged materials
UP AND AWAY
New London hotel The Emory presents the perfect showcase of RSHP's signature functionalist style and hospitality group Maybourne's elevated luxury
CABIN CLASS
An elegant escape on a remote Ontario island offers up a contemporary reinterpretation of the local vernacular
RECOVER VERSIONS
British-Indian collector Rajan Bijlani's design collection is inspired by a mission to conserve the Chandigarh legacy
DOTTED LINES
Library Street Collective's new cultural hub in Detroit, designed by OMA New York, is a signature rebuild that makes the most of the site's existing structures
POETRY IN MOTION
An immersive London exhibition takes visitors on an enchanted journey inside the watchmaking world of Van Cleef & Arpels
Talking point
Nice pen.' Two words, but in Steven Zaillian's recent remake of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley, weighty with symbolism.
Modern love
We take a tour of Caracas' treasure trove of midcentury and brutalist gems