Welcome to the Island of Trojan Horses!

The exhibition is based on the Trojan Horse Summer School ”CLIMATE CHANGE OF WORK”, that took place on Bengtsär Island, Hanko in Southern Finland last August.

“The Learning Centre spaces are some of the most visited on the campus, and I think that the questions asked by the Trojan Horse project will resonate with many people regardless of their professional background, be it art, engineering, design, architecture, business or science. The exhibition in the middle of a busy lobby serves as a place to stop, clear your mind a little bit, look around, and at each other", says the exhibition curator Ksenia Kaverina.

Focusing on what is the meaning of work

Trojan Horse summer school is a platfom for thinking what design could be. “The purpose is to encourage designers and design and architecture students to do more experimental projects and research based work.  It is also important and interesting to talk about the ways in which invisible power structures affect design and how design affects invisible power structures. We also want to show that there are no clear barriers between the art and design fields", says  Kaisa Karvinen, who is a Master student in the Department of Architecture in Aalto University.

This was a second season of the Trojan Horse summer school, circulating around the topic of work. The point was to rethink the everyday work-life asking questions: What does work mean? Who has the power to decide what is counted as work? How can we re-organise our day to day life so that it would create new structures of feeling and meaning as well as new structures of work? Can work be therapy? The exhibition now poses these questions, amongst others, to the visitor to take further.

The questions were discussed during the summer school by design researchers, curators, artists, farmers, architects and writers. The group consisted of fifteen Bachelor’s and Master’s degree students from architecture, fashion design, interior and furniture design, graphic and service design from Aalto University, Lahti Institute of Design, University of Lapland and the Tallinn Academy of Fine Arts. There were also students from Kaliningrad, Chicago and Berlin. The school was organised by the Finnish Design Summer School association, which was established in 2016 by architect Kaisa Karvinen, graphic designer and researcher Tommi Vasko and writer Ida Kukkapuro.

In the future, the organizers want the summer school to become a semi-permanent framework, with an annual summer school and other events. The idea is to show that exhibitions, reading groups and parties for example can be done differently.

Date: 6 Oct - 10 Nov, 2017
Venue: Aalto University Learning Centre, Otaniementie 9, 02150 Espoo

Read more: trojanhorse.fi