Design and contemporary Finnish lifestyle

“Lifestyle is the typical way of life of an individual, group, or culture.” as interpreted in wikipedia. Lifestyle is something that gives people identity. There can be several identity givers like family, geography, history, religion, aesthetic style, and sexuality, etc. Identity givers are the most important aspects of life because everything else is organized around them.

For individuals, the lifestyle is important because it provide an easy way of making choices in this increasingly diverse life. The lifestyle of one person can be also fixed and fluid. For Example, the famous author, Jim harrison, has a fixed lifestyle which involves writing, cooking and hunting. But meanwhile, in order to chronicle other people’s life, he need to change his life one year or later, which is fluid with time, place and situation.

Though people can get several identities from different distinct identity givers. It does not mean that each identity is the same important to everyone. For example, a woman has a much stronger identification of “Surfing lover” than “from California”. Surfing can described as her lifestyle since for this woman, her career as dentist even also satisfy her with sufficient money and time for surfing. Similarly, a Minnesota man can be identified with families while an old lady living in Paris can be identified with lesbian.

When individuals come together, their lifestyles have to negotiate with each other. When people form a group and even society, they select the symbolic capital as their habitus, which means internalized social order.

What about design in Finnish lifestyle? As everyone knows, design plays an important role in society and daily life in Finland. In a project, researchers study from 17 falimies in Helsinki to learn how designed product exist in their life.

Design plays significant roles in people’s life. First, of course, design is associated with physical life like eating, sleeping, washing etc. Second, design also enrich the spiritual life of people. Last but not least, designed elements and objects strengthen the social bonds between people. For example, parents store stuff for their children or someone is known in the circle of friends to be “the recycling center”, which is a popular scene in Finland.