Annika Toijanen
Design MA
Konstfack University Of Arts Crafts and Design
Graduates: 2023
Specialisms: / Furniture / Sculpture
My location: Stockholm, Sweden
Annika Toijanen
First Name: Annika
Last Name: Toijanen
University / College: Konstfack University Of Arts Crafts and Design
Course / Program: Design MA
Graduates: 2023
Specialisms: / Furniture / Sculpture
My Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Website: Click To See Website
About
I´m a multimedia artist and designer with a Bachelor in Industrial Design and a Master in Design. My passion is to create design that makes it easier for us to live in smaller living spaces without sacrificing quality, aesthetics and function in the process. I also enjoy re-designing things that could benefit from being improved or to create something completely new out of materials that have already had a life in a different form. In my art I research my Finnish heritage. A heritage from a country I´ve never lived in, with a language I only partly speak but that holds my entire family history. My goal is to bring the stories of my female family members to light and to capture a sense of the land, forest and lakes of my ancestors native country into each art piece I make. In my degree project I decided to combine the two to create a story-bearing furniture that can fit into smaller living spaces while still being an attractive choise for larger one.
My degree project PIECES pays homage to traditional wooden furniture. Furniture that tell a story and have played an important role in our homes historically, even though they may no longer be needed or used in the same way today. Furniture like the freestanding and lockable linen cabinet or the kitchen sofa with built-in storage and a place to sleep. Furniture that is large in size and can be hard to fit into today’s smaller homes but which holds a huge sentimental value and is often handed down through several generations. So, what if I could weave a piece of my family history into a piece of furniture for the future? PIECES resulted in two handcrafted wooden cabinets that tell an important piece of my family history through the organic and repetitative shapes implemented into them. The cabinets are a tribute to my grandmother Aino and her three year younger sister Hanna born almost a century ago in a small town in north eastern Finland. It´s also my way of symbolically reclaiming their right to the land, forest and lakes around their childhood home that the sisters did not get a share of in the inheritance after my great-grandparents passed away. The two cabinets are named after Aino and Hanna and all major design decisions have been made with each sisters individual charactaristics in mind.
Competitions
