All posts by Dan Hill
Tilting at windmills.
If you look very very closely at the photo above, you'll see a string of windmills on the horizon, set against the perfect blue sky. This is Högsåra, an island that forms a small part of the archipelago that stretches from Hanko to Turku in south-western Finland.
Kasnäs, western Finland
We're here to better understand the local decision-making cultures and stories - to explore how these wind turbines got up, including the resistance to them as well as those in favour. But our focus isn't wind power per se; we're looking at this case as it helps frame the wider debates about how to transition Finland to a more sustainable 'bio-economy', as our colleagues in Sitra's Maamerkit ('Landmarks') programme call it.
So we're interested in how communities might balance the desires of individuals with the desires of the wider community, the role of authorities and institutions as well as communities and industry, how we might reorient elements of bureaucracy such that they are more 'user-centred', how to use the powerful enablers of new communications platforms, alllied to the increased appetite for local engagement in decision-making, and so on.
We've also been to the port of Hamina in eastern Finland, towards the Russian border, as described by Bryan a couple of weeks ago. In both Hamina and around Högsåra, we interviewed several of the key protoganists in both stories. More to follow.
From the ferry
Our expedition team - currently Bryan, Karoliina Auvinen, and Nina the interpreter (who in Rosala was translating in three languages simultaneously: English, Swedish and Finnish!) - visited both places. As a side note, in a country as big as Finland and with a history as rich as Finland, it's fascinating for a mere immigrant like me to observe the differences between the Swedish-speaking western Finland as compared to the influence of Russia to the eastern side, and then with Helsinki, where we're based, caught in the middle. There are numerous cultures of decision-making at play here, even in a country of only 5.5m people.
Developments like wind farms, which can often be contentious for some, place these decision-making cultures under a microscope. But we'll also be roving around Finland a little, looking at other case studies, as well as exploring international examples of new kinds of decision-making that might enable more resilient economies - in the widest sense of the word 'economy'.
And then we will be building something, working with some local communities in Finland, perhaps prototyping a new kind of decision-making. Please do send us any examples you think might be relevant - it's a broad topic, so there is no chance we'll have all the right angles covered, particularly at this stage.
(From an organisational point-of-view - not that you need care! - it's also gratifying to see three Sitra teams (us at Strategic Design, Maamerkit and Energia) coming together for this project, as it helps flesh out how our new organisational model might work, with a new emphasis on doing projects, run by multi-facted project teams within broad and connected focus areas. It also builds on a long-term interest of mine in civic participation, which I summarised in this entry on 'emergent urbanism' a couple of years ago. My now colleague Bryan had, unbeknowst to me, started working on similar themes, building on the promise of Kickstarter. I would then build on this idea of 'a Kickstarter for development of shared spaces and resources', dubbing it Brickstarter, our informal working title for a while. Meanwhile, our colleagues in Maamerkit were also getting interested in terms of how to turn NIMBY into YIMBY, as regards bio-economy development. All these threads have now converged in this project. Funny how things work out.)
The other reason to mention Högsara - and Kasnäs and Rosala - is that it was startlingly beautiful. A simply stunning day, with endless blue sky over endless snow-covered frozen sea. Sadly, the Baltic is now so polluted that the traditional trade of fishing is no longer tenable here (at a Mistra event in Sigtuna, I heard the director of the European Environment Agency clearly outlined it was a matter of 'when' not 'if' the Baltic will collapse.) So, as beautiful as the area still is, the place needs to find new opportunities for locals. It's hard to credit when you're faced with these pristine images, which hardly do justice to the scene, but there are significant challenges facing these small dispersed communities, amidst the other 190,000 islands around the coast of Finland. Another reason why this project is fascinating.
From the ferry
In other news, the 'Helsinki Street Eats' book nears completion - yet again! But we're close now. And our discussions with the City of Helsinki over street food are getting interesting. It looks like this NIMBY>YIMBY project above will be joined by work in food entrepreurship as major new projects this year, alongside the existing Design Exchange, Low2No and Helsinki Design Lab.
And just on Design Exchange, Sara Ikävalo, the designer that we've worked with City of Lahti to 'place' into a forthcoming urban development project, joined Marco and I for a good planning session on Monday. She's hit the ground running and we're working on getting a blog together for that project too - there's already plenty to report. I'll skip the details for now, but - quietly and steadily - Design Exchange is one of our most radical projects in a way; placing strategic designers at the heart of government. A real test! More to follow, though, as Sara is already making a difference.
A good, productive week.
The 'Exchange' project we've been referring to for a few months emerges a little, blinking in the shallow light of a oold December morning. We're looking for a strategic designer, with particular experience of urban and participatory design processes, to help design a new participatory design competition model for the development of the train station area in downtown Lahti.
It could be you! If you have a combination of excellent Finnish and some experience of architecture/urban planning, participatory processes and ideas competitions that is.
Bryan built a page at where you can find out more details and how to apply.
(This is a direct test of our notion that embedding a strategic design capacity at the heart of organisations makes the difference. It's a joint project with TEM, World Design Capital Helsinki, and City of Lahti, and hopefully the first of several similar experiments.)
Secondly, the City of Helsinki's Food Culture Strategy project manager, Ville Relander, dropped me a line about the former slaughterhouse building project he's been working on (an incredible space seen here back in June).
The first spaces in these premises are now becoming available for rent and Ville, and the City, are looking for "gastropreneurs" to apply - more info here. (The site's only in Finnish at the moment, so if you're not a Finnish speaker, get into Google Translate and see what you can do. Alternatively, get in touch with Ville directly - he'd be happy to answer any questions.)
Ville's showing people around the space tomorrow (Friday) 9th December at 1300 and again on Wednesday January 11th at 0900. Again, do get in touch with him directly to find out more (contact details at the bottom of this page or try Facebook, LinkedIn etc.).
First dusting of snow this week. Exciting!
Eira, Helsinki, 0830
This was the view in Helsinki (Eira, specifically) this morning as I dropped my kids off at päiväkoti (daycare). For a relatively new Helsinki resident, the sun appears to be doing some extraordinary things - hanging low in the sky for a few hours, and so bouncing off the Baltic at oblique angles and shrouding only the skyline of the city in a canopy of sunlight that just floats at the top of buildings. November, which roughly translates in Finnish to “dead month” I believe, is traditionally the grottiest month, all rain, cold and darkness before the snow comes to bounce the light around more. But so far it's relatively benign, almost mild. Almost.
Anyway, last week was spent picking up the pieces after the aforementioned Australia trip. I was able to spend a little time with Marco, who was largely knee-deep in stewarding Low2No and Exchange towards the end-of-year finishing line, trying to keep intent intact in both.
Justin and Bryan were in the USA, working on the NYC and Boston book launches for In Studio (both of which have now occurred, and went well by all accounts). Bryan and I managed to catch up about our work reshapng our office space and culture, with Tapio. We’re trying to prototype a new organisation, in line with our new strategy processes with Paula + team, through prototyping new approaches to spaces and systems.
I spent some time on this, and some time on Low2No also, eating up a forthcoming workshop with Arup, Experientia and Granlund, hoping to take the vision down a notch towards strategy; or really, a set of projects which exemplify and unpack the strategy.
Also, much writing. Not least for an upcoming shortish book on strategic design, picking up some of the leads from In Studio; it will include a short diatribe on why I think design thinking is largely a dead-end (before you send me hate-mail, please note the active modifier “largely”.)
I was also lucky enough to receive a visit from Seoul’s Hope Institute, who are perhaps the premier social innovation outfit in South Korea. As usual with these social innovation types (see last week) lots of overlap in terms of intent and approach. Thanks to Sunkyung and Yang So for swinging by on the way home. (Finnair’s strategy of making Helsinki the best European hub for Asia can really work in favour sometimes.)
Nice also to see Patricia McCarney, from the Global City Indicators facility, a colleague from the HDL Sustainability studio team, who was also in town briefly as part of a panel for an architectural competition.
I also had a coffee with the intriguingly anonymous blogger behind Jees Helsinki Jees, one of the best Helsinki0based blogs in terms of unpicking and critiquing the way the city is working. Or not. Sharp, acerbic and informed, it's good to see this kind of contribution to the conversation in a culture which can tend to shy away from uncomfortable topics. Her posts on parking regulations are worth the (free) price of admission alone.
And last but far from least, a really good meeting with the City of Helsinki, of which more later hopefully.
Finally, a new project from one of the world’s most interesting design firms (disclaimer: also good friends) BERG London, which subtly, wittily, playfully, respectfully and just plain smartly connects digital stuff to everyday physical contexts, habits and experiences in a way that has previously been beyond, well, most. Welcome, Little Printer.
Late late late, always with the weeknotes. I do apologise, not least to my more productive colleague Bryan, who is always on time with his weeknotes DAMN HIM. Bryan, Justin and Marco spent most of the week on Low2No here in Helsinki, while also setting up the forthcoming New York and Boston book launches for our In Studio: Recipes for Systemic Change book.
As for me and my tardiness, I can only point to the impact of a 4.5-day trip to Australia. I'm a member of the South Australian government's Integrated Design Commission Advisory Board, and we were due a meeting. As that's a long way to go for a meeting, every other minute was accounted for with some form of productive activity, save a jetlagged dawdle around Darlinghurst which I mentioned here.
Darlinghurst, Sydney
The advisory board is good: it also features John Denton of Denton Corker Marshall (non-Australian readers may know their multiple-award-winning Manchester Civil Justice Centre building or their work at Stonehenge), plus the writer/critic Elizabeth Farrelly, who I'd long wanted to meet, as well as Dr. Graham Hugo, Prof. Catherin Bull, Prof. Janice Birkeland, Assoc. Prof. Joanne Cys and Jim Hallion from SA Dept. of Premier and Cabinet.
We have a good session in the morning discussing progress on strategic campaigns like Adelaide's 5000+ urban renewal/city redesign project, and how to link, say, a particular riverbank project to wider strategic change that might stretch right across South Australia (I'm always looking for Trojan Horses!)
Hot Adelaide
In the afternoon we visit two local productive centres—Adelaide College of the Arts and The Jam Factory. Hearing the staff talk was fairly inspirational, as was seeing the students, craftspeople and artists at work. The live glassblowing at the Jam Factory was quite a blast, though it did occur to me that the heat outside on the street was approaching that of the kiln inside. Quite different to the Helsinki I'd left a few days before (although I'd seen similar scenes in a lovely archive documentary piece about the great Finnish designer Kaj Franck at an exhibition at our Designmuseo a few months ago.)
The work that Integrated Design Commissioner Tim Horton, and State Government Architect Ben Hewett, are doing in South Australia is really interesting. They're closer to government than us i.e. actually embedded within the core of Dept. of Premier and Cabinet, but it's one of the few other projects we know of worldwide beginning to build a strategic design capacity at the core of government. Thanks to Tim, Ben, Sky, and the rest of the team for a good couple of days.
I was also hosted by the Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI) and much thanks to them as well, especially Sarah Stokely and Brenton Caffin. I had a good private session with them, also in Adelaide, and their projects—especially Radical Redesign and Family-by-Family—are well worth checking out. Again, fantastic work.
TACSI also co-hosted a public lecture I gave in Adelaide with the IDC, as well as a 'Social Innovation Dialogue' seminar I ran in Sydney (this was also a joint effort with Australian Social Innovation Exchange, whose Steve Lawrence came through Helsinki a few weeks ago, and was moderated by the great Martin Stewart-Weeks.) (Thanks to Alex Roberts at the Australian Government's Public Sector Innovation site for a nice write-up).
Darlinghurst, Sydney
All that plus an interview on Radio Adelaide's show The Plan, with Angelique Edmonds (it's the South Australian version of Melbourne's essentially peerless 'The Architects', on Triple R) and a newspaper interview too. Phew.
Back in Sydney at the end of the week, I caught up with Gerard Reinmuth, a principal at one of Australia's most interesting architects' practices, Terroir (based simultaneously in Sydney and Copenhagen, as well as on the twitters.) Gerard is also Practice Professor on the Architecture at University Technology, and so I spent a enjoyable if challenging last day in Australia as part of a panel reviewing work on the course Gerard has been teaching over the last few months (panel also included John Choi from Choi Rophia and David Neustein of various. Strategic issues were also to the fore here, as the project was a Sydney-based detention centre for immigrants (talk about a loaded topic); but also much discussion of the particular qualities of building and site. Another excellent project.
So that was week 139 that was.
Notes rather than thoughts/links this week, if you don't mind. First up, a few meetings.
Bryan and I caught up with Ville Relander, the City of Helsinki's PM for their Food Culture Strategy. Many, many ideas spinning out of that one, as food culture is one of the most exciting and rapidly moving development areas in Finland. Equally, food is a way in to so many everyday systems: local culture, logistics, entrepreneurship, national identity, immigration, sustainability, service culture, retail, smart systems, production, industry, popular culture, urban planning, health, education, waste, the relationship between urban and rural; it's all in there. It's a key area for us, in terms of systemic change. We look forward to working with Ville on this.
(Incidentally, we met at Kluuvi, the newly-opened complex in the city centre, which is worth a look. Not least the excellent Eat&Joy Maatilatori (farmers' market) in the basement.)
Sitra also hosted a visit from Fundación Chile, one of the few organisations with a similar remit and position to ours. As part of the visit, Bryan and I met with Francoise Tirreau Glasinovic and Alejandro Tocigl.
It happened to be a rather beautiful autumn day, so we took Francoise and Alejandro for a walk around the harbour from Ruoholahti to Moko on Perämiehenkatu. Although there are key differences, the similarities between our organisations are manyfold. We talked for a couple of hours and we were probably only just getting going. Key areas of interest included different tactics for overcoming the tendency of project teams towards silos, or conversely towards proliferation of project ideas, and how to measure multiple forms of 'capital' from investments and projects, such as those suggested by concepts such as shared value. And so in turn, how to decide what to do in the first place! Many thanks to Francoise and Alejandro for dropping by and for the great conversation—we will continue the dialogue.
The strategy and budgeting process rolls on, and fills many of the gaps left between these conversations. We're knee-deep in it, but the end of the beginning is in the sight. It was good to hear that we (Sitra) had a very well-attended external stakeholder day recently, providing strong input from outside. Bryan and I will be working with our colleague Tuula to ensure all these conversations turn into useful tools for the organisation.
In between all that, it was a week of engagement through events. Marco was in Taipei for much of the week, at the 2011 International Design Alliance Congress, presenting Low2No and taking part in a panel on urbanism. Justin was at DMI Design Management Annual 36: Design at Scale, in New York (and good to hear from Justin that old friends Jake Barton and Nicola Twilley were on top form.) Bryan took off for Buenos Aires for the Centro Metropolitano de Diseño for various events, including giving a talk at the Design Festival, and general scouting. I was holding the fort in Helsinki all week, but will report back on last week's Tallinn conference shortly, and prep for next week's trip to Sigtuna for a Mistra gathering.
I did however give a talk at Nokia on Friday, to their design team (Marko Ahtisaari invited us, after we attended Joi Ito's talk a few weeks back.) Interesting times at Nokia, given the announcement of their new phones the day before. It remains to be seen whether this is a comeback, but there are always some smart cookies there, and the Lumia/Asha/flexible concept phone combo has already changed the conversation around the company. Thanks to Matt George for hosting, and organising a good crowd.
MIT Press!
While out and about, no doubt preparing for Snowtober, Justin also snapped this pic of In Studio in situ at MIT Press, in Cambridge Mass, which means of course that you can buy it there. As reported last week, it's getting out there. Do keep your feedback coming in—it's invaluable learning for us.
At DMI NYC, Justin had given a quick welcome/overview to DMI Helsinki in 2012. On related matters, congratulations to Cape Town, winner of World Design Capital 2014.
Helsinki is next year's WDC, and as with the Finnish winter, we are beginning to sense its imminent arrival. Preparations and planning are beginning to transform into activity, and it will be fascinating to see what it feels like on the street. I remember being impressed with how Victoria's State of Design festival was so vividly present in the city of Melbourne, rather more than Sydney's Design, say (no fault of the very capable Sydney Design organisers by the way; just some key differences in levels of funding and particularities of urban fabric and culture.) It wasn't so much painting the town red as turning the city over to design for a couple of weeks. It's a challenge to sustain that for an entire year, but the programme for Helsinki WDC look to be nicely diverse at this point.
More to follow on Sitra's involvement with WDC Helsinki.
And following last week's links to reports from inside Occupy New York, this from inside Occupy London, by Madeleine Bunting in today's Guardian. From "architecture of consciousness" to "key symbolic public space".
A mixed bag of links, reports and observations this week.
Although it's just been found to be in fine fettle in terms of its core missions (link; Finnish) Sitra is looking at its new strategy for the next few years. We're all getting heavily involved in that process—as the Strategic Design Unit, we sit in Sitra's internal strategy function, headed by Paula Laine.
We're also heavily involved in reviewing the design documentation for one of our core projects, Low2No. Justin is stewarding that complex process through, which is not easy given the complexity of the project and the number of stakeholders involved. Note also Justin's writing about some early indications of potential systemic change emanating from Low2No, in terms of other timber construction projects beginning to spring up in Finland.
Bryan was in Romania for a seminar and workshop - he'll post separately about that in a day or so. Marco has been buzzing around the city, meeting potential partners across various projects. Some exciting developments there, potentially around the aforementioned and still mysterious Exchange project.
I've been working more on the Street Food briefing—including spending an early Saturday morning tramping around Helsinki's streets filming somewhat disgusting discarded detritus from Friday's night's various grilli nightclub collisions. More to follow on that. The footage should balance my recent ode to Helsinki, that's for sure.
Earlier in the week, Bryan and I had a great meeting with Steve Lawrence, Executive Officer of the Australian Social Innovation Exchange (ASIX) who was passing through town. Despite our different backgrounds, we had lots of shared vocabulary, interests and approaches, which was very heartening. Steve had also carefully read In Studio, and had a series of dauntingly perceptive questions for is. It made for a rewarding lunch; thanks to Steve for popping by. Which reminds me, if you're ever in our neck of the woods, do get in touch - we're always interested in people doing similar work.
Finnish education made headlines in the US last week, some of it here in the Washington Post and some of it here on CNN.
It's a real success story for the country (not least for this dad with two children in the Finnish system!) but one which was also the focus of one our studios last year. Bryan and I in particular are spending a fair amount of time discussing the so-called 'Nordic Model' (see Mary Hilson's book, which I'm reading) and how these broad 'spirit level' systems (see also healthcare, and many other aspects of Finnish daily life) can continue to develop and progress, drawing in external sparks of innovation and accessing new funding models without losing their incredible ability to provide high quality service provision right across the population.
On a personal note, my wife and I had a parent-teacher meeting at our kids' päiväkoti (daycare) recently, which was a) as close to group therapy as I'm ever likely to get (in a good way), and b) utterly instructive and encouraging about the teachers' careful, considered but ultimately warmly human-centred interest in kids exploring their emotional range, their natural environment, their physicality, their social ecosystems, and so on, with barely a direct mention of literacy and numeracy. That comes later, as the PISA results indicate.
Switching gears, it's been extraordinarily thought-provoking to see the Occupy protests spread around the world this week. One of our core concerns is the apparently increasing lack of faith in governments' ability to deliver solutions to today's complex problems (and this despite Silvio gettting a vote of confidence).
That's partly what seems to be playing out here in the Occupy movement, but was also present in the riots in the UK earlier this year, in various aspects of the Arab Spring, and in protests on the streets of Athens, as ell as in numerous other less visible arena. We're interested in understanding the various cultures of decision-making at play at the moment, and in recent history, and in deploying projects which begin to explore various alternative trajectories for governance, at all levels. Anyone interested in this work, or with something to say, please drop us a line.
In terms of toolkits rather than attitudes, visualisation is another of our core interests, so it was also interesting to read another article in The Guardian (NB: other news sources are available), concerning the quality and range of data visualisation on offer, in the light of recent critiques. Personally, I'd agree that many examples of information and/or data visualisation are indeed the mullets of the internet. Yet a good visualisation can engage, focus and stimulate dialogue like few other media. Embedded in that Guardian article, check the (WWF-style-not-really) face-off between David McCandless and the legendary Neville Brody.
As Bryan mentioned last week, our work featured in The Guardian. It's been interesting to observe the reaction to that—largely positive, for which thanks—and how it grew and diversified over the week. One aspect of that discussion within the design discipline concerned picking apart the difference between strategic design, design thinking and service design. To me, these are all quite clearly different aspects of design, albeit with occasional overlaps. To other people? Not so much!
As it happens, I'm writing something that will try to pick that apart a little, at least at an initial level. I'm pottering away at this in the mornings before work (whatever "before work" means), usually at the excellent Gran Delicato café. The text should be out later in the year, all being well. Will keep you posted.
In terms of other ripples from the article, see also this Spanish translation of the piece. We're thinking of making 'La crisis es el momento de que entre en juego el diseño' t-shirts accordingly.
And finally, some links.
A favourite landmark here in Helsinki is the Hotel Torni, a sort of mini-me Empire State from 1928, which is crowned by a fabulous viewing deck. Legend has it that this was designed for mooring airships to, such that airborne visitors from Paris or Berlin, say, could elegantly descend from the airship (somehow?) directly to the bar for a civilised long drink during the white nights. This image is rarely from our minds, for I hope obvious reasons, along with the notion that surely it's time for the return of dirigibles to our skies as passenger aircraft. As a result we found ourself gazing longingly at these wonderful vintage images of the USS Akron and Macon. Unlike the airships intended for Hotel Torni's mast, Akron and Macon were airborne aircraft carriers, from which aeroplanes would enter and exit through a 'plane-shaped opening in the ship's skin (reminiscent of Wile E. Coyote-shaped holes in various other objects). This, they would do via a trapeze. Yes really.
USS Akron
Training plane on USS Akron trapeze
Construction of USS Makon
Main ring design: Hindenburg vs. USS Akron
And I cannot get this data-point out of my head: apparently, during the recent Blackberry outage, traffic accidents in Abu Dhabi dropped by 40%. Oh humanity! A distressing, almost visceral illustration of the interconnectedness of systems across boundaries.
Humanity is partially redeemed by this exploration of abstraction by Bret Victor, however, which has beguiled a few of us all week.
Finally, if you've ever wondered how we open doors here in Finland, it's like this. Or at least it was in 1979. (Press the CC button at the bottom of the video for subtitles, if your Finnish isn't up to scratch.) Do not be a bad door opener.
This week's diaries look much the same as last week's. Another launch event for the HDL In Studio book, but this time in London.
HDL In Studio books waiting to be launched.
Before the launch though, Bryan, Marco and I take part in a roundtable on 'getting systemic change done'. We'd jointly organised the event with E3G, who hosted it at their Southwark HQ. We actually started on Monday night, pulling most of the participants together for dinner. (We often like to use this tactic of the-dinner-the-night-before; it breaks the ice in a natural, convivial way rather than through some dreadful exercise in which people are forced to suggest what kind of animal they would be if indeed they were an animal. It also enables people to tentatively pitch a starting position and rehearse some of the conversation. And it means you can hit the ground running in the morning. Plus, it's dinner.)
Alejandro, Peter and Marco.
Kipper, Bryan and Dimitri.
Sam and Nick.
Me, Alejandro and Peter.
And Tuesday was excellent. Participants included Alejandro Litovsky from Earth Security Initiative, Sam Bickesteth from Climate and Development Knowledge Network, Kipper Blakely from Social Investors, 00/The Hub's Indy Johar, E3G's Nick Mabey, Malini Mehra from Centre for Social Markets, Peter Sharratt from Deloitte, and Dimitri Zhengelis from Cisco/LSE Cities. It was a long but fruitful day, with the morning spent presenting and comparing case studies, and the afternoon spent poring over the common ground.
Indy and Marco.
Malini and Alejandro.
We banned Powerpoint for this session, but made a small exception for Alejandro's diagram.
With much of the group talking about inspirational change projects around climate change, sustainability and government, often from the context of exerting change from 'outside' a system, I decided to present a contrast, talking about my work at the BBC, around the iPlayer on-demand media service. This was a form of design work conducted from deep inside an organisation; sometimes instinctive, sometimes tactical, sometimes strategic.
Notebook sketch of iPlayer 'architecture of the problem'.
Me, whiteboarding.
This preparatory sketch from my notebook, scribbled over breakfast, really represents the tip of the iceberg in terms of design of both context and product. I transferred the diagram to the whiteboard as I told the story, in order to give a sense of how messy, complex and multi-dimensional this embedded design work can be. I never thought of it as "strategic design" at the time, and indeed though it's quite different to much of the work now, there are many shared elements—not least as these services do represent a form of systemic change, albeit with different purpose.
Ultimately, this was a demonstration of understanding 'the architecture of the problem', as we would now call it, or how contemporary media works as a system (see some earlier thinking about how contemporary media works) and how that connects to organisations and culture. This was beyond editorial concerns; that the design of media systems and organisations themselves was the strategic act that would alter the greater system.
Indeed, though it was a deliberate choice as contrast, what was interesting in the morning's discussion was seeing how much commonality there was between case studies and discussions. The others round the table presented some fascinating projects, ranging from the UK's Green Infrastructure Bank to The Hub project, via case studies from South Africa, India, Thailand, UAE, Argentina and of course Finland.
Alejandro, whiteboarding.
Nick and Bryan.
Kipper, Dimitri and Nick.
Much to chew on, and we're looking to develop that and other discussions over the next few months. As this territory is yet to be coherently mapped, we draw a lot from these conversations.
We launched the HDL In Studio book at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) on Wednesday morning. We had a good gathering for coffee and korvapuusti (Finnish cinamon buns, sourced from the Nordic Bakery in Marylebone via Bryan!).
Korvapuusti.
Marco gave an introduction and hosted a discussion with Peter Sharratt, an architect and sustainable development leader now working at Deloitte, and Marianne Guldbransen, Head of Design Strategy at the UK's Design Council.
Pre-event game plan.
Marianne Guldbransen.
Peter Sharratt.
Our books disappeared faster than the korvapuusti, which is surely a good sign.
Marco introducing the book.
As a self-indulgent sidenote, it was a particular pleasure to be back at RIBA. When I was at the BBC, based at Broadcasting House down the road, we would often use the place for awaydays and meetings of all kinds; plus, it was a favourite 'hiding place' from my team when I needed to get some concentrated work done. (Sorry team.) It's a wonderful space.
RIBA.
After the launch, we hot-foot it across town to Whitehall, accompanied by NESTA's Laura Bunt, to visit the UK government, with whom we swapped notes in another fascinating, thought-provoking session. This was followed by lunch and more productive note-swapping (a theme of the week) at the Institute for Government in Carlton Gardens.
Whitehall.
The rest of the week was spent back in Helsinki, keeping various projects ticking over. I gave a talk at Fjord Helsinki on Friday morning (thanks for the invite, Fjord!) on various aspects of our work. It was good to see their team, and their space. Their regular Friday morning shared-breakfast-at-long-table-plus-talk will be something I'll take into our conversations at Sitra, concerning our future workspace.
Fjord Helsinki.
I also met a local researcher (via Demos Helsinki—ta!) who we'll ask to unpack some food supply chains for us. I've been working on a briefing document around food culture in Finland, and a diagram laying out just how, say, a hot dog emerges on a Helsinki street corner late one night will probably be particularly interesting.
Justin and Bryan have been knee-deep in re-launching the Low2No website (Low2No is one of our key 'systemic change' projects, predicated on building a new neighbourhood in Helsinki.) Do take a look and have a poke around; there's lots of new material and a sharper design to help you find it (which will be familiar to users of this site.) We're starting to carefully pick apart the difference between the block and the model (watch for some forthcoming writing on this 'hook/trojan horse' approach) as well as some curated contributions unpacking the idea of sustainable cities in general.
For instance, read the essay by Federico Parolotto and Francesca Arcuri of Mobility in Chain on sustainable mobility. I had the pleasure of working with Federico in last year's 'zero-carbon Finland' HDL studio, and it's always interesting to hear Mobility In Chain's thoughts on these issues.
Finally, Marco has been hard at work setting up our third major project area, alongside HDL and L2N. Known internally as 'Exchange' at the moment, we'll reveal more of this as it emerges, but suffice to say it should test a new and important angle for our work. Pretty exciting if it comes off. More later.
INDEX Awards party.
Catching up, catching up. As predicted, Autumn is here and the pace is picking up. Several of us are just back from Copenhagen Design Week, where we did a number of productive things, as well as just enjoying that fine city.
Me, Karsten Schmidt, and Matt Jones, photo courtesy of Matt Cottam.
I was there to speak at the Copenhagen Interaction Design Institute (CIID), with Matt Jones of BERG and Karsten Schmidt of PostSpectacular, organised by the great Matt Cottam (Tellart etc.) and Alie Rose (CIID). The talks from Matt and Karsten were both chock-full of challenging, brilliant thinking and as ever it was a privilege to share the bill with them.
CIID Open Lecture
CIID Open Lecture
I'll try to post some thoughts from my talk here (or there) later, but essentially it covered the shift from interaction design at the urban scale to strategic design at systemic scale, and the importance of designing both the matter (the objects, spaces, services) at the same time as the meta (the context, the organisation, the culture.)
Low2No is one of our primary examples. Here, what looks like a building project is actually a 'trojan horse' or 'hook' for a whole series of other systemic changes, around the forestry industry, smart cities, food culture, design methods, ownership models, carbon accounting, innovation environments and so on. So this was 'From Matter to Meta' and back again. There's a lot more to come here, but thanks to CIID for organizing and thanks to an attentive crowd, particularly taking the time out from a sunny Saturday afternoon.
Toldboden.
Toldboden.
Toldboden brunch, photo courtesy of Matt Cottam.
Bryan and I joined Team CIID + BERG for Sunday brunch at Toldboden, which we suspect may be currently the best brunch place in Europe, if not the world. We understand that this is quite a claim, but still.
The Mountain, by Bjarke Ingels Group, Ørestad.
VM Buildings, by Bjarke Ingels Group, Ørestad.
Then just time for a quick excursion to Ørestad, to see a couple of fine, and by now well-known buildings by Bjarke Ingels Group (but also the fairly bereft streetscape there. Hmm.)
Bryan and Marco were in town to participate in a conference organised by our good friends MindLab. 'How Public Design? Leading Change in Government' was an international seminar featuring government, academics, design practitioners, and others. The foundations for the conversation were laid down by rich stories and case studies about existing design work within the public sector; the conversation itself often focused on how to scale this work up, and what new cultures of public sector might result, or otherwise be enabled. Thanks also to MindLab for a great event.
INDEX Awards party.
INDEX Awards party.
As well as general INDEX Award shenanigans (and congrats to one of our collaborators, Alejandro Aravena, for his firm Elemental's award there) we were also in Copenhagen to meet a consignment of The Book (around twelve copies sent to our hotel).
The Book arrives.
We finally have it in our hands. Called 'In Studio: Recipes for Systemic Change', the content unpacks the studio model and its use in terms of understanding the architecture of systemic challenges and quickly sketching out coherent, practical and imaginative visions that address such interlocking problems. Hopefully you'll find it a useful resource and a good read. Again, credit to Bryan, Justin and Marco for producing a genuinely original contribution, and particularly for Bryan for handling the production. The book looks and feels great, thanks to design by Two Points in Barcelona.There's a foreword by Geoff Mulgan of NESTA, and an afterword by our president, Mikko Kosonen. We'll post about the book separately, very shortly, including details on how to get it.
We've also been working on a dossier around design ethnography; please have a look and let us know what you think. Any comments gratefully received, particularly other references or case studies you think we should link to.
In other work, we've been working hard on Low2No, and I've been picking up two threads in particular: the 'smart systems' work (our informatics-led angles developed by Arup and Experientia) around the building, and then how our organisation develops in the context of the new building. The relationship between building projects and the organisations that inhabit them is complex and symbiotic, and as part of the client body for the block, and ultimately an occupant, we'll be using this opportunity to continue the development of Sitra the organisation too.
In terms of 'smart systems', we're trying to develop a more sophisticated understanding of what this might mean, particularly as compared to yer usual building project. On a typical project, ‘smart systems’ can essentially be seen as shorthand for 'automating everything in sight', which we feel would remove the opportunity for engagement, agency and responsibility from the various users of the building. Which doesn’t feel particularly smart to us.
So we're trying to build up a simpler but more engaged relationship between occupant and other users, building, building technology, organisation, and city. This should take advantage of contemporary thinking around smart systems and smart cities whilst preserving, even expanding, the role of people within and around the building. This is partly to do with our strategic objectives around 'sustainable well-being', and the desire to produce replicable strategies for systemic change, but also to do with creating a simpler, more effective, more enjoyable workplace.
These words might come back to haunt us—until a building is built and occupied, one never knows—but we want the exact opposite of the all-too-familiar hotel room experience in which you're searching for the impenetrable remote control required to turn on the standard lamp. Some things are not problems that need fixing.
Some are, however, and we think we're on to something new and useful with our approaches here. We'll report back on this too, as it develops, on the soon-to-be-relaunched Low2No website. (Yes, I'm aware this is turning into a series of nested links to future posts.)
In the aforementioned CIID talk, around matter and meta, one thing I touched on was redesigning the context around products, services, relationships. Or, as I put it here, "You can't design a transformative service without redesigning the organisation."
This follows the legendary Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen's quote: "Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan." i.e. the context is often an organisation, and so a complex net of relationships, one way or another. As I pointed out in my talk, I think you can go the other way too i.e. design the context considering the thing it is intended to produce. Again, it's symbiotic.
With this in mind, our work in terms of organisational change at Sitra is therefore part of this building project, part of this ICT procurement, and so on. Given that Low2No represents one component in another stage of development for our organisation—a Sitra v4.0 perhaps—we have also been exploring what a Sitra v3.1 or v3.2 might be (this numbering is just an example, as organisations are actually in multiple stages of development simultaneously; it also deliberately avoids using the dread word '2.0'!).
These are small-step experiments that we can do right now, iterations along the way to the new organisation in the new building. These are never binary or direct relationships i.e. the new building does not 'effect' the new organisation into life from day one, nor does a new organisation necessitate or articulate a new spatial context. It's never that simple.
So the .1, .2, .3 series of hops in effect enables the organisation to 'try on' new working methods, relationships, identities, new layouts, patterns and habits. It 'de-risks' the change implied to some extent—it makes a new building three years away into something more tangible and at-hand—whilst enabling the kind of instructive forward momentum that prototypes bring to other fields.
Not that Sitra needs redesigning, but Bryan and I did some work at our recent summer awayday in the beautiful forest around Mikkeli, helping our teams constructively imagine some new working habits, patterns and spaces. We may even be able to prototype some of these in our existing building in Ruoholahti, which helped this become more than just a paper exercise.
Oh, and I've also been writing up our research into food culture in Finland. More on that soon too!
The docks don't stop working.
And ... we're back.
Finland returns from its summer break en-masse this week. Cafes, trams and shops are suddenly full again, although the collective mood still seems to be sunny, light-headed, and a little, er, un-focused perhaps.
However, the aforementioned Book finally made it over the line, not least thanks to Herculean efforts by Boyer, who apparently barely got the aforementioned summer break. We have a dummy copy in the office, but the real thing is emerging from printers as we speak. Given it was largely produced before I got here - I merely helped with the edit a bit - I can say it's looking great. More details soon.
The team spent much of the break with the next iteration of Helsinki Design Lab ticking over in the back of our minds, our emerging ideas no doubt inflected by several of us being in the US, UK and China at various times, as well as Finland. Occasionally, a couple of us were in the same place at the same time, and took the opportunity to scribble and think.
And we're getting there. We know it's going to be a progression of last year's studio work (which will be the subject of The Book, by the way).
If the studios were about trying to shape the right questions - or to understand 'the architecture of the problem' - then perhaps we now want to look at the way we shape processes to get things done; to connect vision and opportunity to reality.
A key word from our mission here would be stewardship, but we're also finding ourselves discussing prototyping and procurement, courage and risk. We have an all-day session next week during which we'll unpack this a little more.
Something else that couldn't help but "inflect our thinking" has been the unfolding dramas in the debt crises across Europe and the US: It continues to be uncomfortable if compelling viewing, from one which can only conclude that our current approaches are not coping with the 21st century particularly well so far. It's interesting how this is often an expression of something as intangible, qualitatitive and complex as confidence or trust - or rather lack of it - and so today's overly reductive analytical tools and processes also seem ill-equipped to address it.
And finally, with respect to governance and deliberation, two things caught our attention this week.
Firstly, the Mayor of Vilnius takes the matter of illegal parking into his own hands, deciding that "a tank is the best solution".
Secondly, Switzerland, we salute you!
In brief: Summer continues to unfold in all its richness. (This is actually code for highly variable weather and a flurry of increasingly urgent meetings, but still.) Marco, Justin and I continue to work on Low2No, including several meetings with Sauerbruch Hutton, Arup and Experientia, as well as the local client body. I talked to Monocle about some of the related challenges facing Helsinki in terms of these and other redevelopments. Bryan heads off to the US for a series of catch-up meetings and book edits, initially in New York before joining forces with Justin in Boston. And while the cats are away, Marco and I have a good first planning session on what a 'Helsinki Design Lab 2012' might be.
Further: After a few hours of Marco and I whiteboard hacking on Thursday morning, the place is a mess of intriguing scribbles—graphs, maps, arrows, and various molecular diagrams.
While it's too early to describe an emerging agenda for the next iteration of HDL—Marco likened the process to taking the old machinery out of the barn—there are some firm ideas coalescing, particularly around how what governments and governance mean in a world of weak coalitions and apparently dissolving certainties. That's what the scribbles allude to, and both Marco and I are quietly excited by the potential in the directions appearing on the board.
Next week we'll start to unpack these starting points as a team, such that we can begin to develop both a line of enquiry and a plan of attack. We have a loose-fit timeline emerging, which feels good, sketching out a busy year ahead.
Elsewhere: Sitra now has a couple of Jopo bikes for staff use to get to/from meetings. Jopo are a great Finnish design-and-build story, originally from the mid-1960s, and certainly ready for a little more international attention. The name 'Jopo' comes from JOkaisen POlkupyörä, meaning 'everyone's bicycle'. Originally exemplifying the flatness of Finnish society—a kind of "collective individualism", in their words—the design was resurrected in the 2000s, building upon its easy, vibrant, 'everyday industrial design', based around standard, modular frameworks that are fast to modify and personalise. So, a design-to-manufactured system emphasising the collective that is capable to bending to the individual. A lot of metaphors to play with here. In the meantime, a good healthy way to get to meetings.
One such meeting this week was with Jenna Sutela from OK/Do, a local design-think-tank of some repute. Bryan's previously written about the excellent Clues to Open Helsinki cards produced by OK/Do, Sitra and others last year—a gently inspirational project for many of us working in urban strategy. And before my formal involvement with Sitra, I also attended a great discussion they organised last year as part of their OK Talk series, which featured Bryan, Hanna Harris (The Finnish Institute in London), Amanda Levete (AL_A), Shohei Shigematsu (OMA NY) and Nene Tsuboi (NOW for Architecture and Urbanism). At SIS Deli, Jenna and I talked about the work they'd done with the Oivallus project on the future of education and work in a networked economy as well as their lovely new book OK Talk Helsinki-London, of which more later.
We also discussed how small creative firms here seem to have trouble locating good premises, despite there being space available. We thought there might be room for a stackd-like system at an urban scale, that understood—in a Renew Newcastle sense—how the more fluid firms might be able to occupy space, and matched spaces with uses accordingly. We'd certainly be interested in hearing about any examples of such systems.
And though the Anglo-Saxon in me is horribly aware of all the talk of holidays in recent weeknotes, but this particular week happened to coincide with Juhannus, the Midsummer holiday, and so another mention is unavoidable. Given its intensely seasonal nature, and the relatively brief duration of summer, the importance of Juhannus to Finland can hardly be overestimated, and after a brief storm on Thursday night some of us were treated to a long weekend of bright warm sun and long, light nights, perfect for puttering around islands in small motorboats, sauna and swimming in the gentle if frightfully cold Baltic, and big communal dinners of smoked fish and new potatoes.
As a result, all thoughts of systemic change kept returning to local food systems, producing sustainable versions of communal firewood-burning saunas en masse, and creating low-carbon mobility systems between the Nordic region's cities and their distributed footprint of summer houses. Governance will have to wait.
Summer on Seurasaari
Helsinki is now basking in full summer, with a couple of days touching 30 degrees this week. The city is glorious like this, with every inch of street, park and pavement full of life, and islands like Seurasaari become impossibly appealing places to spend a Sunday afternoon. Like opposing points of a compass, Helsinki can be differently beautiful in hot sun/midsummer and deep snow/midwinter—it's the bits in between we have to work on.
Or work in, perhaps. We are all horribly aware of the month-long summer holiday slowly approaching, in much the same way that Christmas creeps up on British workers. Both are looked forward to, of course, but both compress time either on either side, leading to an increasingly frenetic rush of meetings and proposals.
This week is no exception. Personally, my work on Low2No is beginning to pick up pace, meaning meetings with various people inside and outside Sitra—including a chance to catch up with our partner Irene Cassarino from Experientia, and researcher Tiona Zozul from Harvard Business School—as well as making the most of Justin being in town. Both Justin and Marco were heavily focused on Low2No this week, though also helped guide our other various project ideas into our other various programmes, before Marco disappeared for a well-earned week of R&R in southern Italy and Justin took off to hold the fort back in Boston.
Bryan knocked off some significant milestones in completing the first in what will hopefully be a series of HDL books, exploring the process and potential of strategic design in this context. More to follow on all this, when the time is right.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about Helsinki for my old employer Monocle magazine (see forthcoming July/August edition on liveable cities) and in doing so I spoke with both Mayor Jussi Pajunen, and the City's project manager for their 'food culture strategy', Ville Relander. Both emphasised how the City's burgeoning food scene has become a weathervane of the changing Helsinki, and perhaps Finland, which has also played to our own interests in food as an area of potential systemic change with regards to sustainable well-being—at least when food is viewed as a deeply cultural and complex field of interdependent networks and supply chains, which affects everyone and all places, one way or another.
Justin and Dan meet Ville Relander.
So on Wednesday, Bryan, Justin and I went to visit Ville up at his temporary HQ, the city's old wholesale markets amidst the urban regeneration of the Kalasatama area. The markets are a core part of the city's food culture strategy, with the idea that they become a social space as well as a place to source ingredients, perhaps akin to London's Borough Market, Melbourne's Queen Victoria Market or Barcelona's Mercat Santa Catarina, but refracted through the prism of Nordic cuisine and public space.
Sikasirkus, or 'pig circus'
The main slaughterhouse building is an incredible asset, with a sturdy yet elegant, long low form that is perfect for re-appropriation, and some horrifying/appealing features such as the sikasirkus (yes, that translates to 'pig circus') for transporting pig carcasses through the building. The place still smells fairly porky, but has huge potential.
Wholesale market at Kalasatama.
Ville is clearly an asset too, of a very different kind, and he spoke with enthusiasm and insight about the City's approach to food. The City of Helsinki has significant impact on the food business, not least due to the fact that tens of thousands of hot meals are served every day in the City's kindergartens (päiväkoti in Finnish)—where most kids go to pre-school—and so its aspiration to make half of this kindergarten food organic by 2015 could impact positively on supply chains across the region.
But the City can equally impact the street and its food too. As noted previously, we're researching this area very closely—currently, The Saga of the Camionette, and What It Means for Helsinki. Watch that space.
Sketching systems.
This also means we're diagramming furiously of course, both for the aforementioned book and also generally, trying to find ways of suggesting a strategic design approach that connects 'the päiväkoti and the camionette'.
Which leads me to a brief note on whiteboards (to follow up our previous on Post-its). Given our rhetoric around 'designing the conditions' around systems, it's only right that we look at our own working environment from time to time. And this last week's iCloud announcement from Apple, combined with our ongoing fascination with services like Square, had Bryan and I trading ideas back and forth, not just about new public and private services made possible by such advances, but also our own workspace.
Accordingly, we've been developing our internal 'knowledge management' systems (hacking together Tumblr, Dropbox, Basecamp, Twitter, Facebook and various other more bespoke systems), the hardware we use (including gearing up for more video, perhaps saving you reading all these words every week), and conjuring up entirely new approaches to sketching and scheduling on our floor-to-ceiling whiteboards.
It's interesting how bespoke this all is—how workflows, tools and culture are hardwired into the particularities of teams and places—and that despite attempts to systemise this, bespoke feels right.
Anyway, if the whiteboard system works for more than a few weeks, we promise a full exposé at a later date. If it doesn't, forget I ever mentioned it.
Marco kicks off the Synergize Finland studios with an introduction to strategic design
As Bryan surreptitiously hinted at last week, I’ve just joined the Strategic Design Unit here at Sitra. I’ve relocated to sunny Helsinki from wintry Sydney, which was not an idle decision, though the unique charms of Finland, Sitra and strategic design work ultimately made it easy, almost obvious.
I’ve been working on ‘the other side’ of Helsinki Design Lab (I was a participant in the Sustainability studio, as well as the moderator of the corresponding session at HDL Global, both last year) as well as being a designer on the Arup team for the Low2No project, working closely with Experientia on service design and urban informatics. Equally, I’ve been practicing something akin to the Sitra understanding of strategic design for a while, dating back to my work at the BBC and on through various urban development and building projects at Arup, but I’m very keen to consolidate, develop and articulate this work. To me, Helsinki Design Lab provides the best possible platform for that.
In this respect, my first week proved fascinating, as we’re deploying the strategic design ‘studio’ model within the Synergize Finland programme. Three concurrent studios run all week at Hub Helsinki, addressing matters such as education, youth, entrepreneurship and the future of work, and often the interdependencies between all four.
My colleagues and I are not 'front of house' – three other local designers are in that role – but we help shape the way the event unfolds over the week in numerous small ways, from the ongoing design and calibration of the space, to participating in discussions (that three of us are recent-ish immigrants proves somewhat useful), to advising on visualization aspects throughout.
Throughout, Marco, Bryan, Justin and I are observing and discussing how the strategic design model is performing, noting the differences between these studios and last year’s set, looking especially for the particular differences that design can make in this context. It’s safe to say that this will be an ongoing discussion, which we'll do our best to report on here and elsewhere.
In other news, I’ve been preparing for an Australian state visit (that's a visit by representatives of an Australian state) in a couple of weeks, who wish to learn more about Low2No in Jätkäsaari. So I’m rapidly catching up on the aspects of the project I couldn’t see from my vantage point at Arup – it’s interesting shifting from designer-as-consultant to designer-as-client (or one of the clients, at least.)
The rest of the time has been spent meeting new colleagues at Sitra. It's a unique organisation, and at first glance is staffed by equally unique specialists, experts and high-achievers of all hues. I hugely enjoy the process of immersion in a new context, a new culture and a new organization. These times are precious, when a new country or context is full of intrigue, history and mystery, tiny details leaping out at you from all corners as you begin the process of recasting ‘foreign’ to become ‘home’. And yet this sponge-like state is, or should be, also part of what it means to be a designer (amongst other trades, of course). I often recall the acerbic words of fictional design educator Winter Sorbeck in Chip Kidd’s novel The Cheese Monkeys:
"You are a designer. You have to eat the world with your eyes. You must look at everything as it you're going to die in the next five minutes, because in the relative scheme of things, you are. You can't miss a trick ..."
I've been blogging for over a decade, but I'm coming late to this weeknotes thing, I know. We'll see how this goes. Now, to week 113 and beyond ...
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