objects
100One object for every year of Finnish independence
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.
languages
15One structured collection made available across borders
tour cities
5Helsinki, Tallinn, Oslo, Madrid, and Riga
connected views
3Timeline, 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
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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