Work and leisure in Viiskulma, Helsinki.

The demographic divisions of past eras have evolved into divisions in time, a schedule: periods in life – short or long – when we assume different roles. The industrial revolution set the base for mass consumer society, and formulated the ingenious equation: a week’s labour equals a weekend as a consumer, a free man. Here, money earned in servitude translates into different kinds of freedoms, securities and commodities – waypoints in a pursuit of happiness and a meaningful life.

Urban iteration. A construction site in Töölö, Helsinki.

4. City

After the invention of language, fire, the wheel and money, the city may be the greatest human innovation and achievement. The next step is to develop it further. While the 20th century promised a teeming metropolis, but delivered an explosion of dormant suburbia, we will have to take responsibility for the urbanism of the 21st century. Or did we already extinguish the urban process with the benevolence of modernism, planning, welfare and civic democracy? Have the compound patterns of politics, ownership, governance and consumerism killed the mechanisms that could create new city? Yet, while facing unprecedented challenges such as the unpredictability of globalisation, changing climate, future demographics and the complex challenge of providing clean energy, food and water for all, we realize the city may be our only hope. How to moderate the impact of culture and society on our habitat? How can the city shape future society and let us all take part in its conception and construction? How to balance hedonism and idealism, merge ecology and economy, or combine the best of top-down leadership and bottom-up intelligence? How to build an inspiring city?

Four guidelines, concepts and observations towards a smarter, faster, livelier, and more diverse city:

1) Urban sustainability is more city and less sprawl. Streets and railtracks make a city, roads and motorways create sprawl. Intersections and nodes create urban potential and good congestion; transport should form grids, not branches.
2) A matrix of plots cut by a grid is the universal urban syntax. It restricts and consolidates edges, but liberates the conditions within to be manipulated and re-iterated independently. To get the grid working and the process going, establish boundaries for growth.
3) Cities are results of constant iterations. To become urban, fabric must be built up, torn down, rebuilt, modified, again and again. To enhance urban potential, increase population density, leave room for the enriching of services and future diversity.
4) Change is constant, yet it requires both patience and action. Present conditions are irreversible, but always temporary. Masterplans don’t work. Create and manage addresses and their potential with sensitive, flexible and intelligent processes. These may operate in any scale or timeframe. The city is never complete.

Sometimes reality takes its own course. A pool turned into a skate spot in Southern Finland.

3. Reality

When ideas, plans or proposals become the basis for thought or action, and thus participate in the production of reality, they choreograph changes in society, the city and nature; in human and natural habitats. From this point of view, all creative work becomes an investment, potential shares in future reality. Through work, what kind of future can we imagine and possibly create? Leaving a mark, making a difference, and having offspring are basic human traits, necessities of a meaningful life. If the aim is to participate in the contemporary condition and influence the future, what methods will yield the best results? How big or small can we frame this involvement? Each human has limited time and capacity. How to spend our efforts wisely? How to define success?

See, think, do is a series of texts by Tuomas Toivonen (NOW for Architecture and Urbanism) attempting to articulate the relevant elements in the work of an architect today. The second part of the series deals with audience – the frame of reference. Being both an architect and a musician, Tuomas is accustomed to different types of crowds.

Imagined audience by a highway in Northern Finland.

2. Audience

Discussion and critique generate another kind of public space, also co-created, sustained and shaped by its participants. A poor critical climate will undermine all parties, but a quality audience can stimulate exceptional performances. It is therefore our role and duty not only to be good actors, but also best spectators. In addition to actual witnesses, those directly exposed to our actions, there is another relevant forum: our perceived audience. This is our frame of reference for respect, indirectly influencing our thoughts and actions.

Spatial interpretation on the South Bank in London. Photo by Kaarle Hurtig.

What does an architect do?

1) Constructs a point of view by gathering a base of relevant knowledge through observation and analysis.
2) Accumulates and articulates a body of thought through research, experiment, discussion, teaching and writing.
3) Makes a contribution to reality by designing, planning, proposing and building.

The task of the architect can thus be summed up as: see, think, do.

1. Activity

Space itself is neutral, but it is always in context, and can be moulded to any use, mood or situation. Here could be a forest, or a highway, a home, a prison, a factory, a school, a marketplace. Thus space is modulated, refined, defined and condensed by architecture. Becoming thicker and thicker with context, it becomes urban and populated. Space invites us all to define it, to become its co-producers. As a platform for common activity, it also creates shared value: a sense of community. This is the public condition. All space contains this potential, when in the context of human activity and architecture.

While modernist principles described the building as a rational spatial derivative of its purpose, or function, late 20th century architecture sought to do more by manipulating program, its malleable stepchild. Program has an ulterior motive, a built-in code of behaviour, rendering people in spaces subject to its logic. If the scope of architecture is reframed to comprise activity, space becomes open again ― open for interpretation, part of the extended context, inviting the possibility of the unprogrammed, the participation of both the individual and the public. Society and city are thus both made of people and by people.

Architecture, being both the object and subject of human activity, is the key to unlock the potential of the public condition. With participation as a resource, what new open processes can be choreographed for buildings, spaces, objects? How are present hierarchies, policies and processes adopting these new open resources? What kind of liberties and limitations can be created, allocated and distributed to empower, motivate and guide those involved? How can architecture create this freedom and define these responsibilities?

NEWLY DRAWN is a publication on emerging Finnish architects. Photo by Paavo Lehtonen.

Toivonen’s statements will also be published as part of NEWLY DRAWN, a joint project by nine emerging Finnish architecture practices offering an easy access to architecture to the general public through publications, exhibitions and workshops around the world. Moreover, the series of writings creates a foundation for Tuomas’ next music release, Subtitles.