Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.“We’re on 60 latitude north; there’s probably no one in the world that owns darkness like us,” says Håkan Långstedt, chief executive of Helsinki-based architectural lighting studio Saas Instruments. The company mantra is “Protecting Darkness”: a crusade against over-illumination. In practice, it’s an ethos wielded as restrained, “chiaroscuro” style lighting in homes, hotels and lakeside private saunas, and soon in the eagerly awaited extension of the National Museum of Finland. “You can easily destroy things with light,” Långstedt says. “Instead, we think of comfortable contrast: how light fades into darkness. You want a transition.”In a country where the sun lays low on the horizon for several winter months, the Finns’ defining relationship with light has suffused into their design history, from the ambitious 20th-century masters to a new generation that is continually rewiring the landscape. The throughline is often a more subtle understanding of the power of light.In 1929, Alvar Aalto, an architect and designer who saw his work as part of a holistic enterprise, received his career-establishing commission for the Paimio Sanatorium when he himself was hospitalised with illness. Recalling the miserable glare of a bare bulb hanging above his sickbed, the Finnish designer later wrote: “My eyes turned towards the electric light, and there was no inner balance, no real peace in the room.” Alvar and first wife Aino’s design for the sanatorium — a purpose-built tuberculosis facility in western Finland completed in 1933 — is significant particularly for its lighting design: from the orientation of patient rooms to capitalise on full morning sunlight, to the placement of overhead lamps behind patients’ heads, to minimise glare. It laid the foundation for the Aaltos’ radically more humane Modernism, and for wider future innovation in Finland.Four decades on, Aalto would unite his thinking in a late-career masterpiece: Helsinki’s Finlandia Hall. Earlier this year, the concert venue resurfaced from a three-year renovation, illuminated by Aalto’s signature blend of skylights with polished brass, as well as some 2,000 light fixtures that have been cleaned and restored. Designer Mikko Kärkkäinen of Tunto lighting, responsible for more than 700 of these newly modified fittings, sees his work in continuum with the Aaltos’ “balanced and boldly dynamic” practice. Many of Aalto’s contemporaries also forged luminous careers in lighting design. Yrjö Kukkapuro (1933-1925), the furniture designer who died earlier this year, is known for his Luminaires Series YK100 (now available from Swedish lighting brand Blond), a 1960s design solution for his radical home-atelier. Paavo Tynell (1890-1973) is often remembered as “the man who illuminated Finland” for his strikingly sculptural brass fittings, including the famous Snowflake pendant. And Lisa Johansson-Pape (1907-1989), a multidisciplinary designer and co-founder of the Illuminating Engineering Society of Finland, is credited with functional, technical pieces using enamelled metal, acrylic and glass, as well as for transforming many of Helsinki’s public hospitals and churches.For the emerging generation, inspiration comes not only from this formidable design heritage, but also from a profound connection to seasonal rhythms of light and dark. “When spring comes to the north, you can feel the energy levels rise,” says prominent Finnish designer Joanna Laajisto. “It is a very powerful experience.” Her approach is to balance architectural lighting with decorative fittings, often tending towards warmer tones of light, compared with southern Europe. For the studio’s recent NoA House project, a Helsinki workplace, Laajisto incorporated her Ihana lighting collection (designed for Marset), featuring opal blown glass diffusers. “The effect is quite similar to a candle or even a fireplace; they create a soft ambience,” she says. New design talent is also energised around craft-focused and materials-savvy experimentation. Hong Kong-born, Helsinki-based Didi NG Wing Yin’s Wood Shaving Lamp is, he says, a bid for “naturalness”; its meticulously carved lattice of ultra-thin semi-transparent wood shavings and rice glue are set atop a magenta Indian ink-dyed stem, polished to reveal the grain. At Secto Design, Seppo Koho’s most recent form-bent birchwood pendant lamp is named Kumulo — taking its shape from midsummer cumulus clouds and snow-swathed Lapland winter forest.Hungarian-born Imola Balogh, whose grandmother practised architecture in Finland in the late 1960s, recently began to experiment with a wood-based foam, an innovative biomaterial developed by Finnish packaging manufacturer Woamy. Early prototypes of her award-winning “Woodfoam lamp” leaned into the organic imperfections of the industrial process — the “beautifully flawed” porous filtering of light, as Balogh describes. “Exploring ways to intentionally standardise these effects could open up new possibilities for future production.” Chasing the new while respecting the past is an innate facet of Finnish culture; in part, a philosophy proffered by nature’s cycles. “We are constantly anticipating the pleasant sunlight of summer,” says Ng. “The contrast tells me to be patient.” Perhaps this appreciation for the everyday goes hand in hand with Finnish contentment, despite the odds of climate and latitude. “I love the temperature of the light when it comes through the woods,” says Långstedt. “There is a promise in that light, a promise of something good.”Find out about our latest stories first — follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
