Heikki Ruoho
Helsinki, Finland

"For me, form alone is never the start of the design process. More than anything, I look at the life of the object: what is it used for and how. What language does the object speak, how is it made, and how can it be made better? Form is only one part of t

he whole, of the object's DNA. The final product always has to be more than the sum of its parts."

Heikki Ruoho (b. 1969) is an industrial and furniture designer. He received his formal education at the Lahti Institute of Design (BA), and at the Univer

sity of Art and Design Helsinki (MA). Ruoho has worked as a freelance designer since 1997. In 2003, he and Teemu Järvi set up the Järvi & Ruoho design office. Alongside his design work, Ruoho lectures and teaches product and furniture design at the trade'

s leading teaching institutions.

Ruoho has received a number of national and international awards, including: the Ornamo Design Award (Finland -08), the Fennia Prize (Finland -07), the Oribe Craft Design Award (Japan -06), the Caiazza Memorial Chal

lenge at the Promosedia International Chair Exhibition (Italy -04), Workspaces (USA -01), European Packaging Design Prize (Sweden -00), A House for the Third Millennium (Italy -99), and Koizumi Lightning Design Competition (Japan -94). He has been awarded

major grants by the Finnish Cultural Foundation (-06 and -09) and the Finnish Furniture Foundation (-05).