IIRO A. AHOKAS, the founder and design director of ATELIER AHOKAS, is an internationally award-winning Finnish designer & design professional who holds an extensive experience in designing consumer goods in collaboration with hundreds of leading brands. For the past 27 years Ahokas has helped his clients across the lifestyle industries build their companies by developing successful products and surface designs that have been retailed worldwide in around forty countries. His clients and collaborations include e.g. Audi, Unilever, KOHL’S, Crate & Barrel, Richloom, Iittala, Marimekko, Arabia, Stockmann, Hackman Designor, 4murs, Design House Stockholm, CarpetVista, Tkano, Enomoto, Ugépa, Sincol, Sandudd, Burda, Leaf, S Group, Kesko Corporation, Raisio Group, Anno Collection, Vimmacompany, Frenn, The Finnish State Art Commission, and Aalto University, to name a few. See the list of clients, collaborations and projects here.

Ahokas works internationally on design and art projects that vary between industrial production and handcrafted one-offs. His work is focused on creating bold, alternative and dynamic lifestyle products such as tableware, rugs, interior textiles, wallpapers, lighting, furniture, paper goods, apparel, shoes, bags, jewellery and accessories. Ahokas is renowned for modern, all-gender surface pattern and colour designs that he has created for companies operating in the sectors of consumer goods and marketing. He has created alone for the iconic Finnish Marimekko textile and clothing house over fifty interior design products since 2006.

Around 400 publications and media have featured Ahokas’ work internationally. His work has been exhibited across Asia, Europe and United States in design fairs, events, and museums such as 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 has been recognized with a number of awards, grants and scholarships including the prestigious ”European Academy of Arts” which is one of the most outstanding European awards in the field. He has been ranked as the ”World's Leading Designers” by Taschen Publishing and honoured in ”The Year’s Most Ingenious Products” by I.D. the International Design Magazine. Ahokas has been awarded ”THE K.E.N.K.Ä" shoe designer of the year prize and the international ”CarpetVista Design Competition” award. He has also received the Antti Nurmesniemi scholarship awarded by the Asko Foundation. In 2022, Ahokas was selected as the recipient of a grant from the Ornamo Foundation.

Ahokas' professional spectrum expands to academic dimension in the form of lecturing. He has contributed on the current multidisciplinary design education as a lecturer in Industrial Product Design at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. Ahokas has also held a lecturer’s position at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture being in charge of the experimental design education in the MA Degree Programme of Applied Art and Design. (2007-2014.)

Born in 1976, Ahokas took his Master of Arts Degree from the University of Art and Design Helsinki in 2001 (currently Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture). He is a member of Ornamo Art and Design Finland and Design Migration Association. Ahokas is currently based in Helsinki, Finland.

"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."