Kivi Sotamaa

Kivi Sotamaa (born 1971) is a Finnish designer and principal of Sotamaa Design Ltd. He is the son of Finnish designer and college administrator Yrjö Sotamaa. Sotamaa holds a Masters degree from the University of Art and Design Helsinki. He is currently visiting professor at UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design. Previously he has been Assistant Professor of Architecture at Ohio State University and visiting professor at the Universität für Angewandte Kunst , Institut für Architektur in Vienna. Until 2006 he was one of the principals of Ocean North.
In a 2006 article New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp said of Sotamaa's work: "Sotamaa explores a formal vocabulary which reflects his fluid, less bounded, more organic way of working and communicating. In his work there is a resurfacing of ideas that developed earlier in 20th century by surrealist painters painters, filmakers, poets - having to do with the subconscious, having to do with dreams, water, fluidity, and the dissolution of the boundaries that reason applies to experience - with which reason tries to categorise experience. Sotamaa is developing a vocabulary which draws on and expands surrealist ideas into architecture. His work is not just about the technology, the new, the digital - but the continuity with ideas that are integral to modern art."
Sotamaa’s creative work has been exhibited by MoMA, the Wexner Center for the Arts, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Fondazione Trussardi and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa. His work has been featured in the New York Times, 10×10, New Scandinavian Design, Forum Sweden, AD, Praxis, Kenhiku Bunka, L’Arca and Domus.

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