Designing for wellbeing

services with clients, this raised a strong hope or an expectation about
how to make more room for this sort of work on the client side and how it
could be enabled more. We were left thinking how this collaboration could
continue somehow.”
– Expert in family and social services, Espoo
“Design can address every kind of environment planning, smaller than
zoning and construction. This is a neglected area. We are here concentrating
so much on getting the downtown as fine and presentable as possible, but
how to get the suburbs comfortable in terms of the small things – to make
them places that people want to spontaneously love right away? I would
say that the designers could have a lot to say about this. Designers are so
much more aware than ordinary people about what environments and
public spaces communicate. Urban design has slipped away to tinkering
with skyscrapers again, and somehow it feels that the contact with the
everyday lives of ordinary people has vanished from the city planning
department. It would require professionals who are more on the side of
the inhabitants.”
– Project coordinator, Helsinki
“The starting point in architecture and physical and technical design in Finland
is very technology-rational … The inhabitant is acknowledged through
the building or the plan, which in my opinion is slightly condescending.
We would need a designer working next to the architect and engineer to
develop processes for the everyday world.”
– Head of an urban development programme, Helsinki
The students received a lot of praise for their positive and enthusiastic
attitude, which made the professionals see their work in new and refreshing
light.
34 · The cities on design