IIRO A. AHOKAS, founder and design director of ATELIER AHOKAS, is an internationally acclaimed Finnish industrial and graphic designer and artist with nearly 30 years of experience collaborating with hundreds of leading brands on consumer products. Recognized by TASCHEN as one of the world’s top 90 leading designers in Design Now! and featured in I.D. The International Design Magazine’s Year’s Most Ingenious Products, Ahokas has played a key role in shaping successful designs across the lifestyle industries, retailed globally in approximately 40 countries.

His extensive list of clients and collaborations includes top industry names such as Audi, Unilever, Uniqlo, Nokia, Kohl’s, and Orkla, alongside design brands like Marimekko, Iittala, Design House Stockholm, Crate & Barrel, Bemz, Arabia, Hackman Designor, CarpetVista, and Burda. He has also designed for Richloom, Sangetsu, Toli, Sincol Interior, and Texton, and has worked with prestigious institutions including the Berlin University of the Arts, Aalto University, and the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences. His partnerships further extend to renowned brands such as Stockmann, Kesko Corporation, S Group, Raisio Group, Eurokangas, 4murs, Ugépa, Otsu Keori, Leaf, Texmoda, Lilycolor, Tkano, Sandudd, Image Publishing, Anno Collection, Daigo, Vimmacompany, Frenn, and the Finnish State Art Commission, among many others.

Ahokas works internationally on design and art projects that range from industrial production to handcrafted one-offs. His focus lies in creating bold, alternative, and dynamic lifestyle products, including tableware, rugs, interior textiles, wallpapers, lighting, furniture, paper goods, apparel, shoes, bags, jewellery, and accessories. Renowned for his modern, all-gender surface pattern designs, Ahokas has collaborated with companies across the consumer goods and marketing sectors. Among his collaborators, the iconic Finnish lifestyle design house Marimekko has produced over fifty home décor items based on Ahokas’ artwork since 2006.

Around 400 publications and media outlets have featured Ahokas’ work internationally, with his creations exhibited across Asia, Europe, and North America. His pieces have been showcased at major design fairs, events, and museums, including The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Murano Glass Museum, la Casa dell'Architettura Roma, Pitti Immagine Uomo, Notojima Glass Art Museum, Design Museum Gent, Stockholm Furniture Fair, IMM Cologne, Design Museum Helsinki, Habitare, and Messe Frankfurt. Ahokas’ works are also part of esteemed collections such as the Murano Glass Museum in Venice, the Finnish State Art Deposit Collection, and the Collections of SOK and LUOMUS.

Ahokas has been recognized with numerous awards, grants, and scholarships, including the prestigious Europäisches Kolleg der Künste/European Academy of Arts, one of the most distinguished European awards in the field. He has also been honored with the K.E.N.K.Ä. shoe designer of the year prize and the international CarpetVista Design Competition award. In 2020, a product featuring Ahokas' surface design was nominated for a Product Design Award at the Sustainable Interior Design Awards Flinders in the Netherlands. In 2022, he was selected as the recipient of a grant from the Ornamo Foundation. Ahokas has also received, among others, the Antti Nurmesniemi scholarship, awarded by the Asko Foundation.

In parallel with his commercial design career, Ahokas has gained recognition as an invited lecturer in Industrial Product Design at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. He has also held a lecturer’s position at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, where he led experimental design education within the MA Degree Programme in Applied Art and Design. (2007-2014.)

Born in 1976, Ahokas obtained his Master of Arts degree from his alma mater, the University of Art and Design Helsinki, in 2001 (now the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture). He is a member of Ornamo Art and Design Finland. Currently based in Helsinki, Finland, Ahokas remains open to new possibilities, ideas, and collaborations.

"As an artist and designer, one of the main interests and the thematic content of my work is in the psychological aspects of functionality as a diverse term in design. I see design in general as a study of social epidemic, the changes in our environment and the development of urban culture. This is especially interesting in the relationship between space and objects – how objects interact in space, and how humans interact with objects.

I feel that seeing functionality as an inherent part of the object, independent of the user, was born of industrial constitution and mass production – the idea that everyone will use a certain object the same way. To me this created a linguistic and conceptual perversion, the idea that an object can be impractical. I believe that functionality becomes a part of an object only when the object is used or as a by-product of use. This means that functionality is not an attribute of the object as much as of the person using it."