By Johanna Lemola

Helsinki uses design to build a better city.

In late 2014 Helsinki added one more title to the city’s list of international recognitions: UNESCO named Helsinki a City of Design as a part of the global UNESCO Creative Cities Network.

“This recognition didn’t come from nothing,” says Anu Mänttäri, Business Development Advisor at the Helsinki economic development division.

Helsinki’s efforts and achievements in design had been noted by UNESCO, whose representatives were impressed with Helsinki’s commitment to design. This commitment was crystallized in 2012 when Helsinki celebrated the year as World Design Capital.

In fact, UNESCO had encouraged Helsinki to apply for the City of Design status, which would be for the good of other cities: UNESCO is convinced that cities learn from each other’s best practices.

“There are more and more cities like Helsinki that are interested in using design to improve city services,” Mänttäri says. “We are proud to say that Helsinki is a design city which not only talks about design but also actively uses design. We have benefitted from design thinking in an amazing number of different ways.”

The work of World Design Capital Helsinki 2012 has been continued by Design Driven City, a project focusing on making cities better places for citizens with the help of design. The project’s city designers have worked hand in hand with city staff to help these in the use of design thinking to streamline, humanize and democratize the way cities function. 

What good does design do?

Design thinking involves the methods used by designers in developing products and services.

One of these methods, called co-design, is to include users in the development. Helsinki City Library, the city department in charge of library services, has done so with the new Central Library, which is now under construction.

The Central Library is developed by the strength of citizens’ ideas, generated in workshops and with brainstorming. In 2014, City Library launched “Central Library pals”, a project in which 28 potential Central Library users actively participated in the planning of library services over an intensive work period.

Another method used by designers is to step into the customers’ shoes.  A shopping mall in the Helsinki metropolitan area is about to accommodate a series of public services, including a city library, a maternity-and-child clinic, healthcare services and a social insurance office, all in one shared space. Design Driven City designers have brought the customer point of view to the organization of the services to make them as user-friendly as possible.

Experimentation and learning from experiments is a standard approach used by designers. With the help of the city designers, the City of Helsinki Youth Department is applying this method when looking for new ways to provide housing for homeless young people.

Designers also use visualization in problem solving, to help those involved to see the problems on concrete terms.

“The common denominator of the above methods used in design is human orientation. Design makes people’s voices heard,” says Laura Aalto, Communications Director of Design Driven City.

“Designers have a threefold role in cities:  they help to integrate the design of spaces and services, they serve as experts in design thinking, and they help others to anticipate the future by visualization,” says Tiina-Kaisa Laakso-Liukkonen, Secretary General of Design Driven City’s governing body International Design Foundation.

From project to standard activity

Aalto has compiled a timeline of various public sector design projects in Finland over the past 10 years. Helsinki features prominently in the timeline’s 15 projects.

Design Driven City is at the end of the timeline – the two-year project is about to close. This milestone will, however, mark a new beginning.

“Design will continue, and stronger than ever,” Aalto assures. “From here on, design will be an integral part of Helsinki’s standard operations to keep building a better life for citizens.”

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Housing for homeless youth

Prototyping is a typical tool used in design to explore ideas and to test concepts. The City of Helsinki Youth Department has turned to prototyping to solve a huge problem: youth homelessness.

There are more than 1,000 homeless young people in Helsinki. A Youth Department project entitled A Home That Fits seeks to find solutions to the problem with the help of fast-paced prototyping in the form of a series of youth housing experiments.

Design Driven City designer Pablo Riquelme has been closely involved in the project, working on guidance and facilitating the process. He has helped to strengthen the user perspective in the project – that is, to make the young people’s voices heard.

Young people have actively participated in the work. They have helped to define the possibilities and requirements of youth housing. They have helped to create activities intended to test ideas and to create awareness.

“I first helped the project to picture the challenge and to communicate the challenge to all possible project partners. I then contributed to building up the project organization,” Riquelme explains his role further.

In the first youth housing experiment, a number of young people shared a home on the Vartiosaari recreational island for the past summer, testing communal living while working on the island at the same time.

The second experiment is getting started in Kannelmäki in a former youth home for 11 residents. The new tenants will define their own and shared space according to their needs. They will establish their style of living amongst themselves.

“The design perspective was new to us at the Youth Department when we started A Home That Fits,” says Project Manager Miki Mielonen. The project will continue the experimentation. Their goal is to find best practices with lessons learned from 4–6 experiments.

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Citizens brainstorm major new public library

 

The dreams launched the citizen participation in the development of Helsinki Central Library, a new flagship public library to open doors in 2018.

Helsinki City Library used the dreams to draft tentative pilot projects, four of which would be implemented and financed with a 100,000-euro library development fund. The question “which four” was posed to citizens in workshops. The workshops are a showcase of participatory budgeting, the most powerful form of direct democracy.

The library staff have sought citizen participation in many ways by following people to where they like to hang out – for example, by taking to streets with “bicycle libraries”, by setting up pop-up libraries, and by organizing activities such as street painting at the Central Library site. The means to engage and to activate citizens include targeted workshops to involve a variety of user groups.

The open design competition for the library building inspired a welcome public discourse when all proposed designs were put on display.

Helsinki Central Library stands as a lesson of co-design – a process in which users are empowered and encouraged to develop solutions for themselves.

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