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News • Helsinki • Finland • 2012-02-18

Rovaniemi Design Week 2012

Events and trivia

The world’s northernmost design week will be organised for the fourth time in Rovaniemi, at the Arctic Circle in Finland on 17-26 February 2012, in the middle of the Scandinavian winter.

With the temperature well below zero, the landscape covered with pure white snow, day light hours minimal, and night skies lit with Aurora Borealis, the Rovaniemi Design Week is precisely the right platform for Arctic Design. The Arctic climate poses some intriguing challenges for design from the viewpoints of housing, construction, travel, wellbeing and tourism.

The theme for the 2012 Rovaniemi Design Week is Lightness and Darkness. The programme includes exhibitions, fashion shows, designer brunches, designer boutiques, snowy events and international design seminars.

Design Week 2012 will be given its own design and event centre to be located in the Lappia House, which was designed for Rovaniemi by Alvar Aalto. Also new for this year is an extraordinary show full of Arctic light, sounds, forms and clothing design. An area made entirely of snow and ice will be made for the event in the town centre of Rovaniemi, where the educational sectors of the Faculty of Art of the northernmost university in the entire European Union - University of Lapland - will be present.

What can designers accomplish in a single day? The 24-hour Design Competition is one of the focal points of the world’s northernmost design week that distinguishes the Rovaniemi Design Week from other design weeks around the globe. During the 24-hour period, the multidisciplinary design teams work on the given design challenge with the goal of developing Rovaniemi for townspeople and tourists alike.

What makes all this possible in the Official Hometown of Santa Claus, a small town of 60,000 inhabitants? It is the presence of the University of Lapland, it is the will of the town of Rovaniemi to develop through design, it is the over three hundred creative industry enterprises operating in Rovaniemi and it is the spirit of Lapland – lots of willpower and a touch of madness and magic.

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