Design | The house in Kulosaari is like an architectural classic from California, and you rarely get there – This is what it looks like inside

When open the gate Anemone and Antti Nurmesniemen in the yard of the home, it feels for a moment as if a 1960s architectural classic from California had been dropped into Kulosaari: a clean-lined, pine-paneled exterior, abundant plantings and – as if as a secret – full-height windows opening onto the sea.

It’s a rainy day, but when Vuoko’s niece Mere Eskolin receives us, the sun breaks through the clouds and the light reflected from the sea surface ripples on the white surfaces of the home.

Inside, everything is elegantly pared down, white and pine. The home highlights the couple’s treasures in a gallery-like manner: Vuoko’s strong and colorful textiles, Antti’s boyhood drones, Picasso’s a small graphic magazine.

In the studio at the other end of the house, there is still a bohemian mess: stacks of books and magazines dotted with post-it notes, clothes racks full of familiar prints, rolls of fabric, folders, scraps that have accumulated over the years. Antti Nurmesniemi’s interior design office operated there for many yearsand later the farm was taken over by Vuokko Oy.

in Finland there are quite a few homes that designers have designed for themselves. In that sense, Nurmesniemi’s house is like a modernist version of Hvitträski located in Kirkkonummi, whose architects Eliel Saarinen, Herman Gesellius and Sweet Lindgren designed for themselves.

In Nurmesniemi’s home, home and design, private and public, representative events and a circle of friends were intertwined.

Antti Nurmesniemi (1927–2003) was an interior architect whose handprint could be seen in, for example, Palace, but also an industrial designer who gave a look to, for example, the Pehtoori coffee pot and, together Börje Rajalinin with, to Helsinki’s orange metro. Many people also recognize the blue power line poles standing in the sea off Töölö, but may not know that they are the work of Nurmesniemi.

Vuokko Nurmesniemi (1930–) is the better-known part of the couple: the designer created Marimekko’s look in the 1950s and ran the company bearing his own name since 1964. The clothes he designed are classics and in the collections of numerous museums.

The Nurmesniemites got married in 1953 and lived both in Herttoniemi and in Kaivopuisto until it was the turn of their own home in the 1970s.

The Nurmesniemites had often looked at the hayloft plot under Casino’s armpit from the balcony of Antti’s Kulosaari office. When they read in the newspaper that there was a plot of land for sale in Kulosaari, they picked up the phone. It was exactly that plot of land. The deals were soon made. Although Antti had no experience as an architect, he took the home to draw.

The task was not easy, he later said. However, the end result is great, a design case of its time. The house was completed in 1975. The Italian design magazines Domus and Abitare came to photograph when the roof was lifted into place. It has stood the test of time excellently.

Jutta Ylä-Mononen written by Vuokko’s biography according to the building was wanted to blend in with the surrounding nature, and therefore the lowest floor was dug underground. There are 350 square meters, three floors – very few walls, and doors only in the bedroom, toilet and bathroom. In the open space, the roof is supported by 12 pillars.

In the old photos taken from the living room on the upper floor, Vuokko stares at the sea with binoculars. Now the striped divans designed by Antti rest empty.

Antti died already in 2003. Vuokko has withdrawn from the public eye and decided to move out earlier this year when living alone in a big house became tiring, says Mere Eskolin.

The design museum assistant Harry Stone Castle and docent of art history Susanna Aaltonen have been working on the Nurmesniemi home for more than a year now for the Design Museum exhibition, going through objects and archives. Antti’s archives have already been digitized.

We will meet in Kulosaari shortly before the objects from the house are packed to be taken to the Design Museum for the upcoming exhibition. Kivilinna and Aaltonen are sitting at the dining table looking through the prints of the exhibition catalog.

The Design Museum’s exhibition is part of a continuum: Nurmesniemet held their first joint exhibition in 1957 at Galerie Artek. The legendary 1967 Bubble on the Beach exhibition was built in a bubble hall blown up on the Merisatama beach. There you could see not only Vuoko’s experimental disposable clothes and Antti’s furniture, but also Ahti Lavonen works. Even designers came to see the exhibition Charles Eamesa friend of Nurmesniemi since 1959.

The exhibition that is opening now features a hand-picked selection of Vuokko’s outfits from the Design Museum’s Vuokko collection, which includes around a thousand pieces of clothing plus Marimekot on top. The exhibition also presents Antti’s interior architecture projects and industrial design.

The presentation of the Kulosaari home has got its own showroom. The exhibition architecture also has echoes of how Nurmesniemet used to display things in their homes – unadorned and reduced.

Size The Kulosaaren house cannot be transferred to the Design Museum, which is a shame, because it is a unique overall work of art and significant especially in terms of Antti Nurmesniemi’s work – the interior architecture is relatively little protected and preserved.

“Church interiors are preserved better, because they are not renewed every five years like restaurants,” Susanna Aaltonen points out. Furnishings wear out, and that’s why over the years, even significant furnishings have been dismantled and thrown into the trash heap without a second thought.

The home shows the versatility and creativity of Nurmesniemi. Antti was an interior architect, but that didn’t stop him from drawing a house or designing, for example, telephones, and Vuokko studied ceramics at the Institute of Arts, but still designed not only dresses, but also rugs, for example.

Art school didn’t really prepare for a profession, and Nurmesniemi felt it suited him. “Vuokko has said that such a spirit was created there that anything could be done,” says Mere Eskolin.

And the couple did. Over the decades, a huge amount of design, photographs, exhibitions and texts were created.

Harry Kivilinna characterized the Design Museum’s exhibition as a starting point. The material could be the subject of many exhibitions, books and research.

“And what’s interesting about this is that it’s specifically a designer couple,” says Susanna Aaltonen. Even though Nurmesniemet worked in different fields of design, they still shared a kind of designer identity and a common way of thinking.

“We have always felt each other’s presence and support,” Vuokko has said.

Both were characterized by a strong, clean-lined modernism. You can search for comparisons, for example Ray and Charles Eames or for example Rut from Bryk and Tapio from Wirkkalawhy not Alvar and Also from Aino Aalto. “In this couple, the woman was not overshadowed by the big man,” points out Kivilinna.

Now the house in Kulosaari is waiting for winter. Vuokko himself has hoped that the house would be turned into a home museum. As CEO of the Vuokko company and guardian of Nurmesniemi’s artistic heritage, Mere Eskolin hopes that this will happen, after all, the house is a significant place in terms of both cultural and design history.

Many others hope so too.

Antti + Vuokko at the Nurmesniemi Design Museum (Korkeavuorenkatu 23) 28.10.2022–09.04.2023 Tue 11am-8pm, Wed-Sun 11am-6pm. Tickets 12 e.