Yrjö Kukkapuro

Yrjö Kukkapuro RDI (6 April 1933 – 8 February 2025) was a Finnish interior architect and furniture designer.

Education and academic career

Kukkapuro studied design at the Institute of Industrial Arts in Helsinki in the late 1950s, qualifying as an interior architect in 1958. which is included in the permanent collection of major museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It was nominated as the most comfortable chair in the world by The New York Times in 1974, and fellow designer Sir Terence Conran has called it his "favourite place to sit because it is so comfortable".

Kukkapuro exhibited in dozens of solo and group exhibitions around the world. According to his daughter, he kept working until the end, asking only a week before his death for his assistant to visit, because he had a nearly-finished chair design he wanted to discuss.

In 2002, he was appointed Honorary Royal Designer for Industry of the UK's Royal Society of Arts.