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Recipes for Systemic Change - Helsinki Design Lab

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Selecting a Challenge95places, and Sitra has a strong network of expertise around this topic,but it’s already a well-defined problem space that does not benefit muchfrom the strategic rethinking that a Studio is designed to generate. Onthe other hand, situating energy usage issues alongside transportation,consumer behaviour, food, energy production and the other aspects whichwould make up a national sustainability policy <strong>for</strong> the built environmentcertainly does yield a problem space which is not only broad but also currentlyill-defined. That’s a rich challenge.However, it is also possible to be too broad, which decreases the effectivenessof a Studio as the participants spend too much time grapplingwith the boundaries of the challenge. In the example above, ‘Sustainability’is such a contentious word that it is interpreted differently by justabout everyone. To give the Studio an anchor to their conversation weasked them to consider “carbon neutrality in the built environment.” Thisbracketed the challenge by specifying the lens through which we wantedto consider sustainability (based on the best current knowledge of Sitra)and limiting the ef<strong>for</strong>t to the built environment (based on the importanceof this aspect and the strength of our network in that area through theLow2No experience).You will want to avoid topics which cannot stand on their ownbecause they are too abstract. While we were deciding on the HDL Studiotopics in 2010 the theme of ‘measuring’ and especially how to measureambiguous conditions kept coming up. There is some interesting workto be done around how we measure and evaluate ef<strong>for</strong>t in any numberof areas—from the economy to school per<strong>for</strong>mance—but on its own‘measuring’ is too vague to motivate coherent discussion without requiringthe participants to develop some applications to test the ideas, whichwould eat up precious time during the week. Good Studio topics ask theparticipants to respond to a specific problem couched within a big picturechallenge.While much of the work in the Studio will focus on developing astrategic framework that addresses the big picture (‘carbon neutrality’),the role of the specific problem (‘built environment’) is not to be underestimated.It will act as a synecdoche, or stand in, that can be used to testideas and ultimately enable decision making among the Studio team. Tocontinue the example, strategies <strong>for</strong> achieving carbon neutrality can bepre-tested by considering how they might impact the built environment.Similarly, ideas about how to achieve a carbon-neutral built environmentmay be tested ‘upstream’ against the broader goal of ‘national carbonneutrality’ which will include aspects such as the energy use of industry,matters of employment, and cultural factors which are not part of thetypical definition of ‘built environment.’

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