Finns Occupy A Special Seat at Creativity's Table

Eero Aarnio's Bubble chair, part of an exhibition at the Finnish Embassy of his furniture designs. (By Katherine Frey -- The Washington Post)

BLESSING

In the context of design, irrational exuberance is exactly what you want from a show. Ordinary objects become extraordinary when imagination is set free.

By that standard, the Finnish Embassy scored all year. A spring retrospective reintroduced Eero Aarnio and the swaying, swiveling plastic chairs that gave literal meaning to the Swinging Sixties. A second exhibition this fall shifted the focus to emerging talents who are pummeling the status quo.

The embassy put no velvet ropes around Aarnio's womblike Ball chair or the dangling Bubble, two of the most recognizable seating designs of the pop-art Space Age era. Visitors were invited to climb in, an experience akin to following Alice down the rabbit hole. The Ball dates from that carefree era when hipsters lounged in miniskirts and go-go boots. A Playboy cover girl once ogled the world, and was ogled, from within the clear plastic Bubble.

We're not there anymore.

The second exhibition, "Sauma (Design as Cultural Interface)," offered bubbles, too, filled with the scents of cities. But the real innovation was fashion as contact sport. I call it love at first grasp.

Parkas by Aamu Song and Johan Olin were appliqued with Velcro to bring lonely people out of their shells, or keep mother and child connected. On opening night, the strips of nylon hooks and loops froze strangers in impromptu bear hugs. Wriggling free required tact. By the time inhibitions were overcome, design appreciation had morphed into performance art.

Next up: Finland's contribution to the Venice Biennale, "From Wood to Architecture," will open at the embassy in March.

BOMB

Prince Charles garnered praise for donating his $25,000 Vincent Scully Prize to the rebuilding effort in Mississippi but not for the unsatisfying exhibit on urban planning that he brought to the National Building Museum.

It's called "Civitas: Traditional Urbanism in Contemporary Practice." The central issue is new urbanism, the unabashedly conservative, somewhat idyllic approach to land use and architecture, which Charles adopted from Scully acolytes 15 years ago.

Since Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi officials also have adopted new urbanism, making it Topic A in architectural circles. Critics complain that the movement is backward-looking and, among other things, ignores the role of the automobile in modern life. "Civitas" feeds the criticism with toy towns built from white blocks and set on pedestals like ruins from ancient Greece. No Minis motoring on those streets.

The new urbanists' favored tools -- street grids, codes and pattern books -- are glossed over. Nearly 20 new urbanist experiments are presented, but there is more to learn.

For instance, Seaside, Fla., the first new urbanist success, turns 25 next year. How has it aged? In France, tenements in Le Plessis Robinson, a Paris suburb, were rehabbed in 1992. Did more genteel architecture buffer teenagers from the angst that exploded this fall?

As for Charles's model village of Poundbury, it was meant to be inclusive. But residents have taken the prince's men to court to stave off subsidized apartments. Borrowing the prince's words, they have fended off the plan as a "monstrous carbuncle" on their upscale idyll.

"Civitas" remains on view through Jan. 8. Reality would have been more enlightening than building blocks and pattern books.