Low2No carbon living

As part of a team made up of Arup (a global 6000 person engineering and planning firm), Sauerbruch Hutton (an acclaimed Berlin-based architecture studio) and Galley Eco Capital (green building finance specialists from San Francisco), Experientia won an international competition to develop a building block called Jätkäsaari, in the city of Helsinki, Finland, which will have low or no carbon emissions.

Based on the understanding that sustainable buildings require sustainable living practices, Experientia brings its unique perspective as an innovative experience design company to the project. While other team members concentrated on the architectural, engineering and financial strategies for the project, Experientia’s responsibility in the winning team is to address the delicate theme of how to initiate behavioural change to support a sustainable style of living in this completely new urban district.

Starting with the concept that people, their contexts, social networks, habits and beliefs are crucial tools for creating sustainable change in behaviour, Experientia is exploring ways to offer people control over their consumption and to see the effects of their actions on the environment.

Starting from 2010, and continuing over the next 6 years, the Jätkäsaari district will be designed, constructed and opened to inhabitants. From there, the sustainable ideals that govern its day-to-day life will act as a model and example for the rest of Helsinki, Finland and the world — thereby also supporting Helsinki’s commitments as 2012 World Design Capital.

www.low2no.org

Envisioning
Experientia’s competition proposal, entitled “C-LIFE, the City as a Living Factory of Ecology,” began as a vision shared by a team made up of Arup (an engineering and planning firm), Sauerbruch Hutton (architecture), Galley Eco Capital (green building finance), and Experientia.

The team created a proposal to construct a city block in the new Jätkäsaari district in Helsinki with low-to-no carbon emissions, which soon evolved into C-LIFE: a vision of a centre of innovation and experimentation for reducing energy consumption; a vibrant and participative community, with sustainable planning and architecture; and a world-leader for low-to-no carbon projects.

The proposal was the winner of the Low2No design competition that over 70 planning groups participated in. (Download our winning proposal as a PDF or from the Low2No website.)

The project is run by Sitra, the Finnish innovation agency, and is currently in the design phase.

Understanding
People and their contexts, social networks, habits and beliefs are crucial tools for creating sustainable change. Technology plays an important role in this change, but by itself it is not enough to lead to true planetary recovery. For change to really be embedded in our world, it needs to be a part of our lifestyles, with action and commitment starting from the grassroots, community level.

With this understanding, Experientia began to outline what was necessary for behavioural change to take place in Jätkäsaari. We identified four arenas in which change must occur:

Physical, things such as infrastructure and the objects that surround us;
Personal, including our beliefs and behaviours;
Social, such as shared values and identity; and
Cultural, such as commitment from public and government bodies.

Within each of these contexts, Experientia developed strategies to empower people’s change, including engagement and awareness programmes, through services aimed at creating social actions based on green values; using technology to assist people in making decisions, such as smart energy metres and dynamic pricing systems; producing positive reinforcement loops (with incentives and benefits) for people who live, work and visit Jätkäsaari; and using the community as a knowledge network to share best practices.

In order to create our behaviour change concepts, we drafted profiles of the people who might inhabit the area and the kind of lifestyles they might live. Looking at the day-to-day movement of these people, we generated ideas around the type of needs and attitudes they might have, the type of services and products they might want, and how their behaviours should and could change for them to become more sustainable.

See Framework for behavioural change (PDF) article published in the UPA’s UX Magazine (pre-publication version).

Design
Experientia designed fifty initial ideas for tools and services that could facilitate behavioural change in Jätkäsaari, encouraging people to participate in designing more sustainable living conditions. These concepts included technological solutions such as smart metres, dynamic pricing systems, and data on cost and peak usage; participatory solutions, such as games, competitions, workshops and websites for community involvement; public installations, such as artworks that give information about, and encourage people to reduce energy consumption; and business initiatives to encourage private and public entities to get involved in the quest for a low-to-no district.

For each persona considered in the understanding phase, we developed an individually tailored smart metre that would help that person to monitor and control their energy consumption and CO2 production in the way that suits them best.

Final deliverables
From winning proposal, C-LIFE in Jätkäsaari will now become a reality by 2012 — coinciding with the celebration of Helsinki as World Design Capital.

For Experientia, the first stages of project development involve ethnographic research, participatory design and concept development of smart metres and services to reduce our carbon footprint. We will listen to the needs, desires and behaviours of the real people who will live in the district, and utilise participatory design methods, so that the final concepts and solutions will be designed with and for the people who will be using them.

Secondly, we will conceptualise solutions for carbon demand management (smart metres, tools and services) to influence behavioural change on individual and community levels: to create energy consumption knowledge and awareness. We are focusing on replicable, innovative solutions and fostering Finnish entrepreneurship.

Since our aim is to create an area that will not only reach its goal of becoming a zero-carbon district, but which will enthuse and motivate the rest of the world to follow its lead into a carbon-free future for all, we will help Sitra and SRV to set up and implement a participatory communication strategy to support the design work and position Finland as a global leader in sustainable building

See Experientia news item on Low2No

Partners
Low2No
Sitra
Arup
Sauerbruch Hutton
Galley Eco Capital

Downloads
Experientia Low2No presentation