Yrjo Kukkapuro devoted his restless creative energy to calm comfort, creating dozens of chairs that examined sitters and lended his passionate talent to those around him, and on February 8th at his home in Kauniainen, Finland He has passed away. He was 91 years old.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Isa Kukkapro Embomb.
Over his seven-year career, Kukkapuro designed a variety of furniture for homes, offices and public institutions. However, he was best known for his seat.
“Almost every Finn sat in a chair he designed — at a subway station, at a bank, at a school or at a library,” his company, Studio Kukkapro, said in a news release.
A modernist who was energised by the availability of lightweight synthetic materials after World War II, Cookkapro used a wealth of fiberglass and other plastics. He also favored organic materials such as steamed plywood and leather.
Referring to Kukkapro's merciless pursuit of ergonomics, Jukka Savoranen, former director of the Helsinki Design Museum, which currently leads the Albar Aalto Museum in Finland, said, “plays with form and colour, but I'm always thinking about the users.” center. “
Among Kukkapuro's most famous designs was Karuselli, a smooth fiberglass lounge chair with enthusiastic leather upholstery interiors lying on the edges. He attached a bulbous bucket sheet to a flower-like base with a steel bracket that allowed both swivels and locks to a chair, meaning Finnish “carousel.”
Calselli was featured in 1965 at the International Furniture Fair in Cologne, Germany. In 1966, he appeared on the cover of the Italian design magazine Domus.
Marianne Goebl, managing director of Finnish furniture company Artek, which revived chairs for production in 2013, said that today's consumers love or dislike space-age looks, but the comfort of the chairs I'm not denying that.
“I feel like the yolk from the egg is floating on the egg,” she said of her experience sitting inside.
In fact, the calselli, located in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museums, is routinely welcomed as the easiest chair. In 2011, British design entrepreneur Terrence Conlan told the Telegraph:
Yrjo Kukkapuro was born on April 6, 1933 in Vyborg, a city about 275 miles east of Helsinki, in Yrjo Blumbach. He was Eeva (Vatanen) Blumbach, the eldest of five children and tailor of Eric Brunbach, a builder and home painter.
In 1938, the family moved north from a village near Vyborg to the town of Imatra. There, Eric Branbach found work as a painter and a bus mechanic. This escaped the trauma of evacuation when a war broke out between Finland and Russia in 1939, forcing the Finns to leave the Vyborg region, Kukkapro Embom said. .
When Yrjo was seven years old, his father became angry to discover that the boy's teacher could not pronounce his unusual surname, which had been handed down from his Estonian ancestors. Knowing that “Blumbach” comes from the German word for “Flower Creek,” he renamed his family in the Finnish translation of Kukkapuro.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Kukkapro was survived by two sisters, Terrtu Lempiäinen and Marjatta Ossi. Three grandchildren. and two great grandchildren.
His wife, Ilmeri Kukkapro, married a week after meeting in 1955, the graphic artist and painter passed away in 2022. The couple works side by side throughout their long marriage, and believes that Kukkapro has influenced her sense of colour.
Kukkapuro-Enbom said his earliest ambition was to become a sculptor, but he worried that he would not be able to make a living. In 1953 he enrolled at the Institute of Industrial Arts in Helsinki (now part of Aalto University), where he met his future wife and worked with industrial designers like Irmali Tapiovara, who emerged from the war era, who wanted to bring society and society. We studied together. Visual change.
“Modernism was something that struck Yrjo Kukkapuro early,” Kukkapuro-Enbom said.
Like many modernists, Kukkapuro saw the beauty of the mechanical aspects of the design, leaving the screws and other fasteners exposed, bringing attention to how the product was assembled. This habit earned him the nickname Rubi Mee.
He received his degree in interior architecture in 1958 and opened a design office in Helsinki the following year. With the help of grants, he began developing a prototype of furniture that brought him to the realm of the Finnish manufacturer Haimi. Their collaboration began in 1963 and lasted for 17 years.
The generational change in Haimi led to a spin-off of the new company, Abarte, which was also linked to Mr. Kukkapro.
“Every decade, he would change his style or try new materials,” recalls Kukkapuro-Enbom. Marking an entry into postmodernism by Kukkapuro was an experimental lounge chair in 1982, with colorful wavy shapes forming continuous arms and forefoots. “A little flirty without being too extreme” is how American furniture imprezagio George Beirarian explained it.
Last year, the experiment was returned to production by the Swedish company Hem.
While it may suggest that his lively furniture isn't the case, his daughter said Mr. Kukkapro was particularly playful. The aesthetics were in the services of the users.
“It sounds very boring when you design a bank or office chair,” she said. “He wanted to inspire anyone who had to sit in a chair for hours.”
In 1968, he worked with Eero Paloheimo, an engineer who later joined politics, to build a concrete glass residence and studio in Kauniainen, about nine miles northwest of Helsinki. With its almost undifferentiated interior space filled with swooping roofs, curved walls, prototypes, manufactured designs and graphics, the building looked like a UFO landed in search of a sauna. Next year, it will become a museum and research center.
Kukkapuro was also my beloved teacher. In a recent Instagram post, Eero Koivisto, a Swedish designer who studied with him at the Institute of Industrial Arts in the early 1990s, said, “If possible, it's clear, functional and somewhat personal.” I remembered him as a champion product. I would like to add “wright” in his case. ”
Kukkapuro continued his work “to the end,” Kukkapuro-Enbom said. One project was a chair called Senior, which is intended for older users. He also intended to design “the smallest chair he's ever made,” she says, and his last request could be turned into digital rendering, his years. It was about sharing ideas with the assistant.
Have you ever seen that super minimal chair?
“No,” she said. “He took it with him to the stars.”
