Flexi Spaces: Share Your Lab Space
Flexi spaces: How to start sharing your Lab space
BACKGROUND/HISTORY AND CONTEXT OF THE WORKSHOP
Smart Kalasatama is an innovation platform for co-creating smart and clean urban infrastructure and services together with the City of Helsinki, companies and residents. Constantly seeking new approaches on more efficient resource consumption, Smart Kalasatama has piloted independent use of shared, flexible spaces since 2016 in order to explore the opportunities and challenges involved in opening up underused spaces for the citizens to utilize.
Through its own super flexi space, Kalasatama Urban Lab, Smart Kalasatama has demonstrated the model for independent use of shared, flexible spaces since November 2018. Kalasatama Urban Lab is a test-site for experimenting with digital solutions and additional services that could support the independent use of shared spaces as well as for gaining a more in-depth understanding of the user’s perspective.
MAIN AIM / OBJECTIVE
The workshop aims to give the participants a hands-on understanding of the requirements for opening up spaces for flexible, independent use by helping them identify both opportunities and challenges involved. In order to inspire the participants to experiment with the model for sharing spaces in their own Lab environment, they are provided with practical perspectives on the user’s needs when designing and working with shared spaces.
The model can be used in the context of a Lab environment, but it suits also other kind of spaces: city owned spaces, residential buildings and commercial environments.
EXPECTED OUTCOMES
We hope to provide new ideas and tangible tools for creating new shareable spaces based on the lessons learned in Kalasatama Urban Lab. We want to support other Labs to implement the model for more efficient resource consumption, and for engaging with their network through the utilization of spaces.
BRIEF OUTLINE / METHODOLOGY
We make use of human-centered service design tools for collaborative learning. The session starts with a short introduction of the concept, where we also share our learnings and recent research done on the topic. Proceeding to the workshop session, we engage the participants to imagine the user’s journey through a flexible, independently used space, providing them with in-depth understanding on how the model works.
The other half of the workshop will concentrate on revising how well the concept would work in participants’ own spaces and Lab functions, encouraging them to create critical reflections of the topic, and formulating new information on the possible barriers and drivers for scaling the model in international context.