More connectedness - why bring your work outdoors?
Guest blog from Päivi Raivio: urban designer, placemaker and co-founder Parkly urban furniture company and RaivioBumann - urban design and placemaking studioWhere’s the closest green spot where you can work outside or meet a colleague? Ideally, it’s right around the corner — a real 2-minute city experience, with quality urban life always close at hand. Just the other day I marveled at the photos of London’s Barbican (one of my favorite urban places!) that a friend had posted on Instagram. Even in the midst of the high-rise concrete brutalism, green (and blue) spaces are accessible and very visible. One of the biggest cities in the world, one the most urban settings – yet a lot of greenery to step outside to work, play and stay in. If Barbican can do it, so can other urban areas too.
Our mission at Parkly is to advance the idea of the city of close proximity by building pockets of urban green in all kinds of urban spaces: new districts, old neighborhoods, business parks, campus areas, streets – and more. Our collaborative projects extract a lot of information from citizens and there is a strong signal to us city makers, planners and designers: citizens wish to have a lot more plants and trees in the places they live, move and work in - and even small green pockets play a significant role. These interventions pave the way not only towards a more liveable city, but to everyday life in which it is easy to step outside to work or meet others.
Parkly MiniHealth Forest Green pockets near offices, universities and for example hospitals could provide a relaxing space for breaks and socialising.
The good news is that we truly can re-choreograph our cities by adding elements to the urban space that encourage people to use their cities differently: by changing the environment, we can change our habits. We might be used to a street as a mere passage for getting from A to B, but when we find inviting stopovers along the way, it encourages us to spontaneously linger, stay, and meet others. This applies to work life too: what kind of new spaces could change our habits and routines? Along with comfortable outdoor spaces, we should rethink what efficiency means: pausing increases creativity and access to green fosters happiness at work.
I have been working with placemaking methods to “create platforms for exchange” - places that connect people in campus areas and office parks. Social life in work and study environments needs to be revived after the long and tedious period of remote work during the pandemic. As hybrid work continues, we need to rethink the role of physical work and study environments and use this moment as an opportunity to adopt new habits, such as working outdoors.
Kallio Summer Streets
Greener and welcoming streets can invite people to take a step outside, stop and pause - for example amidst remote online meetings.
Amstelveen campus area New seating areas have been placed on some of the most promising, but so far underused corners of Kronenburg. The locations have been carefully chosen for their potential to invite people to take a break, connect, and enjoy the surroundings.
We have several Parkly projects in work and study environments and the findings are encouraging: outdoor places are actively used for work and spontaneous meetings. When we piloted our furniture at the Maria 01 startup campus in Helsinki, it quickly became the favorite outdoor lunch spot for many. In a project with Aalto University campus we facilitated an open survey in which students proposed dozens of different places for the intervention, which is a signal that such easily accessible hangout places are much needed in campus areas. At the Ariv co-working space in Zug, Switzerland, a previously grey square now invites people to step outside and enjoy the greenery. In Amstelveen, the campus development project led by STIPO is testing locations for social seating — and then expanding by adding more spots. And during Kallio Summer Streets, many people used the new outdoor spaces to read, take notes, meet others, and reconnect, often between remote online meetings.
Outdoor work is one potential way to bring life to public places – which is at the core of what we do as urban designers and placemakers. The Outdoor Office day initiative highlights the new ways we can rethink work and workplaces and we are very happy to invite our collaborators on this shared mission too by encouraging people from our projects to ideate, debate, have a coffee (it tastes better outdoors!), make some calls with birds twittering in the background… and more. Connecting with nature while at work might be a grounding experience: after all, it is the real world we need to be regularly connected to in order to understand that our work has an impact on it.
“Outdoor work is one potential way to bring life to public places – which is at the core of what we do as urban designers and placemakers. The Outdoor Office day initiative highlights the new ways we can rethink work and workplaces and we are very happy to invite our collaborators on this shared mission too by encouraging people from our projects to ideate, debate, have a coffee (it tastes better outdoors!), make some calls with birds twittering in the background… and more. Connecting with nature while at work might be a grounding experience: after all, it is the real world we need to be regularly connected to in order to understand that our work has an impact on it.”
