Designing for wellbeing

involved knew that we had only eight weeks to get the most out of our
Mellunkylä experience, which made the project intensive. The temporary
nature of the design studio was helpful in our becoming local, as the tight
project deadlines encouraged the students to get to know Mellunkylä and
its people. We built a relationship with the local people and learned local
phenomena that inspired us with richness, vulgarity and beauty. Acting
local in Mellunkylä made us aware of the complexity of rethinking suburban
dwelling. We needed to understand multiple perspectives, some of
them parallel and some creating contradictions for the design task. We also
needed to interact with multiple actors, local people and various organisations
that could commit themselves to rethinking the neighbourhood
and take actions based on the new ideas. The opportunities for both small
everyday improvements and radical innovations are practically endless.
The design studio in the field was a serious exercise. It involved people
who have a personal and fragile relationship with their homes and neighbourhood.
If you move to the field, you are responsible to them for your actions
on site. If you wish to establish a design studio in the field, consider that:
• you cannot limit your creativity to a certain activity, because
in the field you will need to use your creativity in any task that
might come in front of you;
• on site you are on an adventure and you will never be able to
predict what might happen next – it may bring you new people or
issues to work with; and
• your previous design principles might feel insufficient, and you
might end up questioning your design material or objective.
We suggest that suburban developers should work with designers in the
field. Suburban development is a matter of acting locally and making change
through action. The collective learning and building of new realities in the
imagination of everybody involved happened through the creative process,
and therefore the result is different for every participant. Everybody
97 · Design studio in the field