Introducing Pekka & Minna

First of September 2013, Olive Green Window will celebrate it's first birthday. Yesterday it passed a significant landmark - the blog has now been viewed over 50 000 times. Thus, we really want to thank all of you for following our journey, it means a lot to us to know there are so many renovation/restoration/MCM enthusiasts who are interested in frequently taking a peak for what is happening behind the Olive Green Window.

Some of you may remember the story behind the blog, how we first got started. For a long long time, Pekka has been really keen on mid-century modern architecture and design, and collecting and restoring lights and furniture from that era. When we fell in love with our 1960's dream home and eventually closed the deal in August 2012, we knew we were about to launch a major renovation and interior design project, which we really wanted to document. This is when a budding idea of a blog finally materialised, and the Olive Green Window was born. This is also when we invited all of you to join us by making the blog public, and looking back, we are really glad we did. The blog has become an important element of the renovation project and a shared hobby, to which we both contribute in different ways.

Pleased to meet you in person! (Photo by Nani Härkönen, http://naniannette.fi)

So, who are we, and how do we work on this? Pekka is an industrial designer, co-founder and a creative director in Seos Design. His professional background is in design and design related research, consisting of working in several different positions as designer, design director, researcher and visiting professor. For last 15 years he has been working both in business and academic fields in Milan, Barcelona, Shanghai and Espoo. For the Olive Green Window -blog, Pekka takes most of the pictures and is the primary source of all the background information concerning the different pieces. Pekka just loves hunting down interesting MCM-pieces, and subsequently restoring them, whenever necessary. For him, it is often the process rather than the end result which he finds most interesting and rewarding. Without a doubt, Pekka is the driving force of creativeness also in the Olive Green Window team. 

Minna, on the other hand, has a very different background and profession. She has a long academic career in cancer science, after which she has ventured a commercial career in pharmaceutical marketing. Thankfully, she shares Pekka's passion for MCM architecture and design, and so far only a few of Pekka's obsessions have received and absolute "no" from her side. In terms of the blog, she is responsible for writing up the stories based on the background information provided by Pekka. In contrast to Pekka, Minna tends to prefer a completed project over the process, but has a very patient and flexible take on renovations, stretched schedules and continuous innovation. Where Pekka is the innovator of the team, Minna could be described as the (occasional) voice of reason.

So, we hope you continue following us, and enjoy the future posts to come. We have several projects ongoing and many more planned, so there will be much to share in the future as well! We really welcome your insights and views, so please keep leaving comments or send us email at theolivegreenwindow@gmail.com.

Finally, we want to finish by thanking Nani Härkönen (Nani Annette Photography) for taking our picture next to the Olive Green Window. She is a fantastic photographer, and receives our warmest recommendations!