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Aalto University will host one of Helsinki Design Week's main events on the Otaniemi campus in September. Featuring eleven exhibitions and more than 40 designs, Designs for a Cooler Planet presents multidisciplinary research and collaboration projects.

Designs for a Cooler Planet exhibitions officially take place 5 – 26 September, and an informal kickoff event, PechaKucha Night will be organised together with Helsinki Design Week on Wednesday, September 4 at 20.00 in Dipoli.

Dipoli's main exhibition will feature prototypes of biomaterial objects, such as a nanocellulose bicycle, clothes made of non-toxic Ioncell fibre, and the world's first microbial headset. Exhibitions at the new Väre building next to the metro station will showcase sustainable textiles, packaging and urban design. The Harald Herlin Learning Centre exhibits experiments with biomaterials designed by Chemarts Summer School. On September 10 Venice Biennale's Traces from Anthropocene. Working with Soil ceramic exhibition made of contaminated clay material will open at the Beta Space Gallery in Otakaari 1.

HDW exhibitions for the first time in Otaniemi

For the first time, Helsinki Design Week will expand to Otaniemi, which is one of the largest hubs of creative talent and growth companies in the Baltic Sea region.

'We welcome everyone to visit the exhibitions and get to know Aalto community in Otaniemi,' says Anna Valtonen, Vice President of Art and Creative Practice at Aalto University. 

'We want to showcase interesting and cross-cutting development projects and promote creative thinking through design and art. Research does not automatically create visual outputs, but multidisciplinary collaboration often produces concrete prototypes and models, which we now bring to our exhibitions as part of Finland's most significant design event,' says Valtonen.

In addition to Otaniemi's exhibitions, the Aalto people are prominently featured in the HDW programme.

'Closer collaboration with Aalto University will add not only a totally new event location to our festival, but also increases the number of interdisciplinary concepts and experiments in the fields of urban design, materials research and service design,' says Kari Korkman, the founder of Helsinki Design Week.

Helsinki Design Week at PechaKucha Dipoli Wed 4.9. 6pm to 9pm, Tickets 5 / 10e 

Designs for a Cooler Planet exhibitions are free and open to the public from September 5- 26, 2019, Mon-Fri from 8 am to 8 pm and on Saturday during Otaniemi Night of Arts, September 21, 2019