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Finnish Cultural Foundation is turning its eyes on built environment. For several years Pori Jazz Festival has been accompanied with SuomiAreena, a series of discussions on different aspects  of  contemporary Finland. This year the Cultural Foundation will organize  a discussion focusing on how housing in Finland will change due to global warming and other forces changing our society. Are sustainability, ambitious architecture and Finnish tastes compatible? I will be moderating a discussion on this on the 17th of July at 11.00 a.m at Pori Art Museum. Joining me are Olli Niemi from NCC Construction, professor Panu Kaila and mp Oras Tynkynen, who is also the government’s dedicated expert on climate change. It is a promising group of experts not afraid to say what they think. So, between Duffy on Thursday and Booker T. Jones on Friday evening, can you think of anything better to do?  Have coffee at The Pori Museum and listen to some house debate with heart and soul.

While the official documents for the new Aalto University were being signed at a prestigious ceremony at the centre of Helsinki on Wednesday June 25th, another kind of groundwork for Finland’s future innovations was laid a few hundred meters away at Katajanokka’s Wanha Satama. A three day seminar, organized by Sitra and Tapio Wirkkala Rut Bryk Foundation, that brought together almost a hundred design thinkers around the world came to an end.

A closed seminar, with very open working methods, was trying to tackle the new paradigm of design and what it means for education, industry, governments and of course the design profession. The new thinking stresses design as a method and a process that can be applied to a lot of things, instead of seeing it just as a way of giving a form to an object or a service. According to this new school of thought, design and designers can help to solve wicked (enormous) problems like health care, global warming or national competitiveness in addition to their old role. Design can be seen as working method that brings together a wide range of experts to tackle specific problems and challenges.

What the seminar accomplished is yet to be seen. We can for example expect a Helsinki Design Manifesto to stem from the work done during the Lab. What is clear and welcome is that the role and nature of design is being rethought, as Finland gets ready to apply it’s new national innovation strategies and to launch the Aalto school that will combine the existing tech, business and design universities in the Helsinki area.

The new paradigm – that design is everywhere and can be applied to just about anything – reminds me of the shift in the role of marketing a while back. For long marketing meant marketing communications, then all of a sudden everything that the customers needed and therefore a company should provide was called marketing. It made sense but was also a struggle for hegemony, the fun people from the marketing department wanted to invade the corner offices, or at least be invited in for a chat.

Now designers want to do the same, and not only designers, there are other powerful forces – like Sitra, some of our industry and some behind the Aalto school – that are pushing for design nation Finland to take its design more seriously. It is difficult to expect anything but good to come out of that.

It was a fun and intense spring, mostly spent working on designing and crafting communication for design and craft. The biggest customer was Onoma Shop in Fiskars that after ten years of operation wanted to renew its strategy, layout, displays and communication and build a web shop. Great Point was responsible for the project and did it together with Lauri and Lotta from Eriksson & Company and Mari Vatanen. The project was financed by Uudenmaan TE-keskus and the Fiskars co-op.

If you are into ethical luxury, like things local, like stories, admire artists and craftsmen and have been to Fiskars, 90 km west of Helsinki, go again, and check out the all new Onoma Shop. If you just cannot make it this season, don’t worry, you can get into that Fiskars state of mind by visiting www.onoma.fi.

It feels like 2008 will be a truly new year. New meaning different. So much ended in 2007 that a lot of new must be going on in 2008. The era of cheap money and cheap energy came to an end. The denial of the climate change came to an end. The era of George W. Bush started fading away. The the idea that there will be and era after Vladimir Putin faded away. In my change of the year column for the newspaper Aamulehti I listed seven things that will be different in 2008, or things that we will just see more of.

1. Quality. In the financial markets a phenomenon called flight to quality exists. During uncertainty investors want assets they understand and trust. Expanding on that we could think that, as energy and money get more expensive, the focus of global capitalism will start shifting from quantity to quality, from the cheapest to the best, from unnecessary crap to what is useful and solid.

2. Local. Rising energy costs and increasing carbon emissions will force us to rethink the travel and transport. Local will become trendy again.

3. Real. Whether it is luxury items, food or family time, things that are real, authentic, traceable, preferably man made or even self-made are making a comeback. In Finland this trend is partly enforced by parents worrying about the consequences of their children’s life on-line. Legos 1 - game consoles 0.

4. Small. The bigger the better. Outside of cell phones and some other electric devices this has been the mantra of the consumer society. Rising gasoline and electricity prices may well change that. Small will become chic, smart and affordable.

5. Teleconferencing. Big companies are cutting down on travel and installing expensive teleconferencing equipment. Individuals are finding iChat and Skype’s video calls.

6. Electronic ink. Amazon’s Kindle may have it’s flaws and be ugly but it is a step into an inevitable direction. In 2008 we will probably see many more paper newspapers die, but it is about time we saw an electronic newspaper emerge.

7. Nato. So far the Finnish public opinion has been against Nato membership. In the coming year there will be presidential elections both in Russia and in the US. Russia will probably get even more autocratic, while the US will hopefully move to a more democratic direction. This shift will probably make Nato look much more inviting to the Finns than it is today.

Happy New New Year!

Today I went to listen to what some of the highest ranking industrial CEOs in Finland think of the climate change. The think tank EVA had first asked them to write their thoughts for a report that was published today and then appear at the seminar together with Jorma Ollila, the chairman of Nokia and Shell boards, and with professor of environmental change Atte Korhola from Helsinki University.

The combined message of these gentlemen was quite clear: a lot is being done, Finnish companies are active and decent, but this does not matter much. The emissions will grow and we are dependent on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. The big challenge is China and it will not commit to serious reductions of its carbon emissions unless the US does the same. Mr. Ollila said that he has high hopes that in Bali, at the UN Climate Change Conference that starts next Monday, a process will begin that leads to The US and China finally committing to an agreement on reducing their emissions.

Meanwhile the carbon emissions are growing faster than in the scientists’ worst case scenarios. This means that by the end of this century in most places it will be 4 degrees warmer and in the polar regions possibly 8 degrees warmer than it is today. And there is almost nothing we can do the prevent this from happening.

Listening to all of this against the recent worries that people may not spend enough this Christmas to prevent us from sliding into a recession, of recent Finnish tax breaks to huge diesel cars, of the EU confusing reducing carbon emissions with enforcing the usage of renewable energy sources (that may increase carbon emissions), one feels helpless. It’s like being in an unprotected orgy and knowing that most of the people present already have the big disease with a little name.

The future will be different. It will be smaller. No huge cars or houses. It will be more local. Travel, whether to work or to the Bahamas will be very expensive, probably regulated. Stuff will also be more local. We can’t ship goods all around the globe the way we do today. The one thing that will become more global is politics. Even the EU is a small player, the world has come together to meet the challenges. The future will also be much more wired. Since we can’t travel in person, we will travel and meet in cyberspace.

It is going to take a lot of adapting. The two things I look forward to is more sailboats and more trains. I have a soft spot for both.