Mari wins Nova Design Award 2012

Mari Isopahkala from Finland has won the Nova Nordic Designer of the Year 2012 award. On Thursday evening, she received her diploma – designed by Kyuhyung Cho – from Monica Förster during an award ceremony at PUB in Stockholm. A Nordic designer is chosen to receive the Nova design award every year by the Formex design trade fair, in association with Plaza Interiör and Gallery Pascale.

The Jury’s motivation:
Mari is a freelance designer from Helsinki who works on a wide front and moves freely between furniture, jewelry, lighting and interior design. But all her products share her ever-present desire to tell a story about the object and inspire emotions and reactions in the beholder.

Mari Isopahkala has been selected as this year’s Nordic Designer of the Year for her exquisite jewelry, gorgeous home furnishing fabrics and intriguing glassware. In a sculpturally interesting and imaginative way, she successfully pushes the boundaries of the strong Finnish design tradition. Her creations go above and beyond the ‘lovelier everyday items’ motto!”

The jury is made up of Pascale Cottard-Olsson, founder of Gallery Pascale, journalist Lotta Lewenhaupt, furniture designer Anya Sebton, Professor of the History of Design & Crafts Kerstin Wickman, as well as design writer and creative director Hanna Nova Beatrice. The award consists of two parallel exhibitions – one at next spring’s Formex trade fair and one at Gallery Pascale, which gives the general public a chance to see and buy the winner’s products – as well as an article in Plaza Interiör magazine and an activity worth up to 50,000 SEK.

“Formex is the Nordic region’s largest meeting place for everyone active in interior design and the idea behind the Nova design prize, which we award in association with Plaza Interiör, is to draw attention to and encourage promising young Nordic designers. Mari Isopahkala represents well-defined tradition combined with a very inspiring new approach and she, together with the other nominated designers, are living proof that Nordic design is destined to be very successful in the future as well,” says Chicie Lindgren, Event Manager for Formex.

“I feel extremely proud to be entrusted with designing this year’s diploma and have tried to convey what I feel to be the typical Nordic core values: function, minimalism and innovation. I wanted to create a diploma that feels both poetic and daring, using an unconventional and flexible system in which the nominee’s name and nationality are braided together,” explains Kyuhyung Cho.

“It feels wonderful to have won the Nova Nordic Designer of the Year award and I’m extremely proud – particularly as there are so many extraordinarily gifted young designers in the Nordic region. Winning the Nova design award feels like a fantastically inspiring way to attract attention to my design work and is something that will definitely act as an incentive for me to keep on working hard to continue creating high-quality and joyful forms,” says winner Mari Isopahkala.

To find out more, please visit www.formex.se or contact:
Ida Mlowe, Press Officer, ida.mlowe@stockholmsmassan.se , tel +46 8 749 44 13

Formex will be held from 16-19 August 2012 at Stockholmsmässan. Formex is the meeting place for innovations, business, trends, knowledge and inspiration. The exhibition is held twice a year, with 850 exhibitors, 25,000 trade visitors and 850 media representatives.