Toivo Raidmets graduated from the Department of Space and Furniture Design of the State Art Institute of the Estonian SSR in 1982.
His relationship with the furniture industry began at the Standard Furniture Factory even before the institute and continued as the Chief Designer at the Tarmeko Design Factory in Tartu after school.
At the end of the 1980s, having settled in Tallinn and working at the Tallinn Integrated Art Production Plant ARS, designing exhibitions became his core work duty – Space and Form, ACTA, personal and summary exhibitions of artists.
In addition to designing exhibitions, he soon began participating in them – mainly with neon pipe light installations in Tallinn, Helsinki, Rauma and Vilnius.
In parallel to those, Toivo Raidmets designed several well-known clubs and restaurants – Eeslitall, Flamingo, Bonnie & Clyde, Carl Friedrich.
In 1992, Toivo Raidmets founded his own company TOIVO OÜ which produces furniture designed by him.
Toivo Raidmets also has a long-standing career as a teacher – from 1995 to 2013, he worked as a professor and head of the Department of Interior Architecture at the Estonian Academy of Arts, and is currently a visiting lecturer at the Institute of Architecture of the Tallinn University of Technology.
Toivo Raidmets is a member of the Estonian Artists’ Association, the Estonian Association of Designers and the Estonian Association of Interior Architects.
Awards:
1986: Exhibition of Office Furniture, Moscow – Gold medal
1987: ACTA ’87, exhibition of Estonian Applied Art and Design – design concept and design (with Eero Jürgenson), Estonian Society of Interior Architects (ESIA) – annual award
1989: International design exhibition “Ruum ja vorm V”, (Space and Form V) Tallinn – Grand Prix
1995: Interior design of the night club “Bonnie & Clyde” in the Olympia Hotel, Tallinn – ESIA annual award
1999: Table “Tea” manufacturer OÜ TOIVO – ESIA annual award
2004: Chair “John”, manufacturer OÜ TOIVO – ESIA annual award