The Kaj Franck Design Prize 1999
Industrial designer Jorma Vennola
Jorma Vennola (born 1943) has been involved with a wide range of industrial design projects since the early 1970s. He began his career in the United States designing toys and glass objects and continued in Finland with glass, appliances, packaging for technochemical products and tractors. Vennola, however, has become known as a designer and bold reformer of high-tech faucets.
The broad range of industrial design is epitomized in Jorma Vennola's work. He has contributed to creating jobs in Finnish industry. The scale of his work has extended from shampoo bottles and lipstick dispensers to gym equipment.
In the early years of his career Jorma Vennola designed Pyrex glass products in the United States, also an innovation in Finnish kitchens at the time. His best-known objects for the Finnish glass industry include the Paula collections of glassware. In addition to serially manufactured glass, Vennola has also designed unique, one-off works in glass.
Many years of cooperation with the buyers of design has permitted long-term product development, as for example with Oras kitchen and bathroom faucets.
Jorma Vennola was awarded the State Design Prize in 1978 and in 1990 he was chosen Industrial Designer of the Year by the TKO association of Finnish industrial designers. Products designed by him were on show at the Finnish Design 125 Years exhibition at Design Forum in 2000.
