100 Objects from Finland / Digital exhibition / 2016-2018

A century of Finland, navigated through everyday objects.

For the Finnish Institute in Estonia, HAAM designed and built an online exhibition that connected one object from every year of Finnish independence into a personal, explorable journey through time and place.

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objects

100

One object for every year of Finnish independence

languages

One structured collection made available across borders

tour cities

Helsinki, Tallinn, Oslo, Madrid, and Riga

connected views

Timeline, full-screen map, and complete overview

The product premise

One hundred separate stories needed to feel like one continuous century.

1917Bark bread
1936Aalto vase mould
1956The Moomins
1987Mobira Cityman
2017Maternity package

Recovered process artifact / September 2016

The interaction model existed before the final visual design.

The original proposal already defined the core behaviour: scroll backwards to 1917, keep the year visible, change the object location on the map, expand the map to the full screen, and zoom out to see the complete collection.

2016 proposal / interaction modelReconstructed from the original brief

Birth yearBring forward the object from a year already meaningful to the visitor.

Full-screen mapChange from chronological browsing to geographic understanding.

Zoomed-out overviewSee all objects together and jump directly to any year.

This diagram reconstructs the interaction logic documented in the original proposal. It is not presented as the final interface artwork.

Personal entry point

Turn national history into personal memory.

The prompt “What is your year of birth?” brought the matching object to the foreground. Instead of asking visitors to begin with an unfamiliar archive, the experience began with a year they already cared about.

A simple question created an immediate reason to explore
The selected year connected a public story with private memory
The interaction worked without requiring historical knowledge first

Time and place

Scrolling changed the year and the map together.

As visitors moved backwards through time toward 1917, the year remained a stable orientation point while the object’s location changed on the map. Motion carried information: it showed that each object belonged to both a moment and a place.

Chronology became the primary navigation model
The changing map added geographic context without opening a separate tool
Neighbouring objects remained available, preserving the feeling of a journey

Change of scale

Visitors could move from one story to the whole century.

A small map expanded to fill the screen, while a zoom-out control revealed all one hundred objects at once. The product supported close reading, spatial exploration, and rapid overview without turning them into disconnected experiences.

Full-screen map for the locations of the collection
Overview grid for direct access to any object
Three views built from one shared content structure

Outcome / Long-term stewardship

The digital product outlived the physical tour.

The exhibition travelled through five European cities in 2017 and 2018, while the online collection remained available beyond the tour. The material later continued through Life in Finland, and HAAM returned years after launch to archive and restore the sites rather than treating them as disposable campaign pages.

Collaboration

A shared cultural project with clear authorship.

The curators shaped the collection and exhibition story. HAAM was responsible for turning that material into the online product and carrying the digital experience from interaction concept through implementation and later preservation.

Curators: Anna Kortelainen and Pekka Toivanen
Producer: Finnish Institute in Estonia
Visual appearance: Design Studio Muotohiomo
Exhibition plan: Valge Kuup
Online exhibition: HAAM / Haamer Ventures
Digital product: 2016-2017
Exhibition tour: 2017-2018

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