Forma Finlandia

The plastic design competition Forma Finlandia concept was created in the mid-1980s to support the corporate image objectives of the internationalising Neste company and to increase the acceptability of plastics and environmental awareness of plastics. Forma Finlandia was an international design competition for finding new uses for plastics. The competition was organised and sponsored by Neste and patronised by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID). The Forma Finlandia competition projects consisted of two main elements: the plastic design competition itself and a utilization program, which included exhibitions of the best entries and press and customer events.

The first Forma Finlandia (FF 1) was organised in 1986-1987 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Industrial Art Association. The competition was open for design, design and interior design professionals, students, and other interested parties. To enter the competition, the proposed objects and products had to be new and unpublished and made entirely or mostly of plastic. FF 1 proved to be a success and the competition was continued until 1994. As the interest generated by the first competition had been primarily focused on design circles, they wanted to expand the competition and redefine the target groups of Forma Finlandia. The second and third year there were two series. Series A “Challengers of the Future” was for new product ideas, i.e. it was the same one as FF 1. Series B “World’s Best Plastic Products” was for plastic products that had been in production for up to 3 years. The first series was open only for designers and the second series was for plastic manufacturing companies.

Here you can see for a catalogue of the Forma Finlandia archive and digitised photos.