Meeting the Paradoxes Making, shaping, co-creating solutions to human scale is at the core of Embedded Design. It brings up huge contrasts, like a single passenger at the international airport. Flows, services and structures are designed to make it easy, fast and safe to leave and to return to Helsinki. Challenges: • The combination of harsh climate and demanding customer needs sets high requirements for continuous service. • The continuously growing volume of passengers and cargo flows means an endless building process at the same time the endless service processes are actually going on. • Need for space and caring for a sensitive environment. • Emerging threats such as biohazards, terrorism, together with a corresponding rising demand for safety in an open world. • Location at the top of the world, and in the middle, between the Eastern and Western halves of the globe. • Connecting networks in the air and on the ground into one functioning system. These challenges are met everywhere. Helsinki-Vantaa International airport provides some models for successful solutions: • Embedded Design. Human-scale thinking. Respecting passengers’ right to safety and good service. Taking care of our sensitive surrounding environment. Result: • Passengers, the IATA and other organisations have ranked Helsinki-Vantaa airport among the top three to five European airports over a dozen times since 1997 – even among the best in the world. All based on the quality of service provided here. Helsinki-Vantaa has won a number of other prestigious awards as well. And it’s one of the safest and most secure airports in the entire world. Inspiring, Safe, and Healthy Living Environment Without visionary guidance the city structure has a strong tendency to have different elements sorted in separate groups. This results in social tensions, logistic idling and a lot of wasted time. All this will be costly – whether measured in material or immaterial values. Even Helsinki has experienced these tendencies. However, thanks to its small scale, none of them have spun out of control. Helsinki has a possibility for proactive planning. The leading idea of modern city planning is a balanced city structure, which has three dimensions: originality of the areas as well as their self-sufficiency and interaction. A safe living environment is created out of these ingredients. Districts must have their own character, reflected, for example, through professions, services or the city landscape. Originality makes the district an interesting neighbour and provides impetus for mutual interaction. Local societies and other spontaneous participation by residents plays an important role in the shaping of the district identities. Self-sufficiency means that daily services are close by, preferably within walking distance. This also means that schools and jobs need to be close to residential areas so that commuting doesn’t take too long.
Open Helsinki — Embedding Design in Life
World Design Capital 2012 Application