The Röhsska Museum award committee for the Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Prize, funded by the Torsten Söderberg Foundation, has decided to Award the Finnish designer Ilkka Suppanen this year’s prize of SEK 1 million.

Ilkka Suppanen’s products have been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Milan Furniture Fair and MoMA in New York. His work has been bought by several major museums including Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and The MAKK museum of applied arts in Cologne.

Ilkka Suppanen
Finnish designer Ilkka Suppanen (b. 1968) studied architecture at the Technical University of Helsinki, and Interior and Furniture Design at the University of Arts and Design (Aalto University), also in Helsinki. He completed his design studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, in 1992.
In 1995 he founded Studio Suppanen, and since then he has worked with many international clients including Artek, Axis, Cappellini, Ferlea, Leucos, Lucente, Nokia, Zanotta, Marimekko and many more.

Ilkka Suppanen is the founder of Club of Helsinki, an international network of designers, business owners, academics and politicians with a focus on global sustainability.

The award committee’s motivation:
Ilkka Suppanen’s design is characterised by time and thought. Time for thought.
With trust and a humanistic eye, he puts substance before style and person before design.
In Ilkka Suppanen’s world the complicated is made simple, and the simple large.

The Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Prize
The Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Prize is administered by the Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg and is awarded annually at a ceremony on 4 November, Torsten Söderberg’s birthday. From 5 November 2015, the Röhsska Museum will host an exhibition by and featuring this year’s Winner.

The award committee is comprised of representatives of the five Nordic countries:
Museum Director, adjunct professor Anne-Louise Sommer from Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen; Director of Design and Decorative Arts Widar Halén of Norway’s National Museum in Oslo; Museum Director Jukka Savolainen of the Finnish Design Museum in Helsinki; Museum Director Harpa Þórsdóttir of the Icelandic Museum of Design and Applied Art in Reykjavik; Tomas Söderberg, PhD h.c., Chairman of the Torsten Söderberg Foundation; and award committee Chairman Tom Hedqvist, Director of the Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg.

For further information, please contact the Press and Media Officer:
Birgitta Wåhlander, birgitta.wahlander@kultur.goteborg.se or phone +46 (0)31-368 31 53.
The Röhsska Museum. Vasagatan 37-39, Gothenburg, Sweden