By Kwon Mee-yoo
Staff Reporter
Helena Hyvonen, rector of the University of Art and Design Helsinki, said design is a must in urban development and she admires the fast development and dynamicity of the Korean field.
"Design starts from beautiful, practical, sustainable products to excellent-working urban systems. The important thing is it should always be human in scale," Hyvonen said.
Hyvonen is from Finland, a Scandinavian country some three times the size of Korea with a population of 5.3 million. She said Seoul's scale is huge compared to Helsinki.
"The simplicity of Finland, which I like so much, and the complexity of Seoul always contrast," she said.
She has been to Korea twice before at the invitation of Seoul City during the Seoul Design Fair, then the Seoul Design Olympiad, in 2008 and 2009, respectively.
"I like the restored river in the middle of the city, traditional Korean houses and the Korean Furniture Museum in the mountains," she said.
"The Korean economy developed fast and Korea's design field also grew up fast. We are strong in design but we have a long tradition. But Korea built up very quickly," Hyvonen said. "Korea's design community is moving fast using conceptual design as a tool."
She pointed out that Korean and Finnish designers have the same interest in nature and similar aesthetic views such as a preference for wooden materials. She emphasized the importance of design in the city's development as it takes account of people's thinking in urban planning more.
"Urban planning cannot be done with design and it needs professionals who ask people about the way they live," Hyvonen said. "Designers, as a profession, are translators as they have visual understanding of space without having the space."
A great city is one made with its people in mind, she added.
According to Hyvonen, design is considered a "useful art" in Finland. "Design is a tool for making the identity of Finland and Helsinki. But, the important thing is that it has to be somehow useful and practical," she said. "That makes design beautiful because it is practical."
She said the Finnish design field is developing toward a more conceptual way, such as services design, which deals with how to organize things. "Finnish people's practical way of thinking is applied to services as well as products."
Hyvonen's Art and Design Department in Aalto University was merged with Helsinki University of Technology and Helsinki School of Economics as of January 2010.
"We understand that changes we are facing are very complicated and we have to educate a different kind of people than before ㅡ people who can cooperate and work as a team," she said. "We need different disciplines to educate these students to work together so they can create something outside boundaries."
The art and design school also has some 200 foreign students and about one-third of them are from Korea. "We have academic exchanges with Seoul National University, KAIST and Hongik University among others," the rector said.