my Helsinki tHE PEOPLE mAkE tHE City Helsinki is my city. it is the root of my pride and identity. it provides the setting for my actions, and i feel like a part of its development. it is part of the life and heritage that i am building for my children and for generations to come. As an inhabitant of Helsinki i have a dream that stimulates me into action and yet remains unattainable and enduring. it can be summarised in two words: Open Helsinki. i want my city to be open to people and ideas. We will not succeed alone, but we have something to give to the world, as well. Embedded design is the enabler of building an open city, the booster of its social, economic and cultural development. this concept ties design to innovation from its very beginning. Design acts as a connector between different disciplines. it oversees the realisation of the inhabitants needs and, in the final stages, ensures that the solution is desirable. inventions, technologies or systems are developed into innovations suitable for use. in Helsinki we use the term embedded design to cover this omnipresent, active force. the influence of design on the city’s development can be read about for the first time in the city strategy that was accepted in 2009. Embedded design is still a new concept with no established interpretation. it is open to renewing, creative thinking. With embedded design, we want to test the boundaries of design theory, broaden the concept and emphasise the effects that design has on society. Embedded design is a viewpoint and a code that focuses the resources of science, art and the economy on a point where a sustainable solution is forged under pressure and immense heat. the city is made up of people. the buildings and infrastructure are the shell and skeleton. they are created for people’s needs, to support activity. People make the city pulsate with their actions. that is why my city is open to researchers, artists and merchants – to all the people that wish to exchange ideas, products and services with us. Only a safe city can be open and welcome the people of the world. my Helsinki is the pocket-sized metropolis. Of Finland’s five million inhabitants, a little over a million live in the Helsinki area. As a comparison, seoul – the WDC 2010 – is a metropolis of 20 million south koreans. that is why we refer to Helsinki as a pocket-sized metropolis, with its size, agility and intimate nature as its strengths. scale alone would be enough to justify the necessity of openness for the success of my city and its people. Closing up into self-contained loneliness would lead us to a dead end. We need the world. that is why we ourselves must be useful citizens of the world. An EnCOurAGinG trADitiOn We have shown that being small does not mean being insignificant, and that sustainable ideas can grow in an intelligently planned environment. the masters of Finnish design showed that great visions can spring from small communities when ambitions are given a chance. the significance of the old masters – Aalto, bryk, Franck, kaipiainen, muona, nurmesniemi, ratia, saarinen, tapiovaara, Wirkkala and many of their contemporaries and forerunners – for current Finnish design lies in the fact that they set the standard to surpass with their accomplishments. in doing so, they created the tradition of interaction between designers and industry that was based on the beliefs of a handful of industrial leaders with faith in design as the driving force behind Open Helsinki — Embedding Design in Life World Design Capital 2012 Application