EDUCATION

Co-design Better Urban Living and Well-being Summer School

Do you want to learn more about innovative solutions for environmental challenges? Are you interested in how to combine urban living with nature and well-being? Do you want to know more about planetary health?

aWelcome to our summer school Co-design Better Urban Living and Well-being – Planetary Health, which is aimed for students interested in environmental issues with either technical, business, design, social, communications or healthcare background. Multidisciplinary and international summer school focuses on themes related to planetary health. During the summer school, you will learn how human health and the health of the planet are closely connected and what can be done to protect and enhance both.

This summer school is arranged in collaboration between all academic bodies operating in Lahti, including LAB University of Applied Sciences, LUT University, University of Helsinki, and Lahti University Campus. City of Lahti. In addition, Päijät-Häme Joint Authority for Health and Wellbeing are also strongly involved.

Summer School is coordinated by LAB University of Applied Science and Lahti University Campus.

When?

Summer school will be organized on May 29 – June 9, 2023 on site in Lahti City..

Summer school starts 29th of May at 10, Niemenkatu 73, Aalto auditorium

Draft of the schedule

All students will get more information and a pre-assignment after 26th of April, deadline to return the pre-assignment is 9th of May

Enrollment has closed on 26th of April

Topics of the summer school

Some examples of the topics:

Our impact on the environment
The impact of environmental changes on our health
Achieving sustainable lifestyles
Delivering successful consultancy presentation
Service design

This international summer school is aimed for both Bachelor’s and Master’s degree students with either technical, business, design, social, communications or healthcare background. All students are welcome! Please notice that we are taking max 80 students to course.

Cases to solve

Here the draft of the cases student team will solve, more detailed information at Summer School

Case 1: Biodiversity and Health

One of the case assignments will address the growing prevalence of non-communicable diseases and degrading mental health in urban populations, as well as the decline of biodiversity and lack of nature connection. Privately-owned and maintained greenspaces constitute a large proportion of urban areas and thus, offer great potential for increasing biodiversity and offering health-benefits to their users.

Your task will be to learn about biodiversity and health linkages, and design a project to your target group to increase biodiversity in their privately-owned greenspaces, and to improve exposure to nature and its health benefits.

Case 2: Urban Greening Challenge

The challenge seeks solutions for re-designing urban areas to the future needs of citizens and changing climate. Urban greening solutions have the potential to answer many alarming questions – and this challenge invites you to redefine cities for a greener and healthier future.

The goal is to re-design an urban area by utilizing diverse and innovative green solutions. This challenge invites the participants to familiarize themselves to the local nature, ecology, urban living, and policies to find solutions to the wicked problems urban areas are facing. By connecting the dots of multiple characteristics of the area and by innovating and getting inspired by examples globally, the team is set to find solutions for greener cities.

The design should include:

Urban greening
Accessibility for citizens
Consider geographical qualities

Examples and inspiration can be searched from other cities, playfulness is warmly welcome!

Case 3: Sustainable Horizons

The target of this project is develop a concept of a sustainable campus tour which could serve as an introduction to different visitors as well as new students to orientate with sustainable solutions and practices in the campus. The students participating this project work in summer school will explore different concepts and solutions in international university campuses and co-design suitable solutions for Mukkulankatu campus in Lahti where LAB and LUT have their premises.

These adaptable concepts can include for example ideas concerning user behaviour, new kind of services, connections with circular solutions, development of physical environment including outdoor environments and accessibility of the campus in the urban environment. EU Horizon programme funded Sustainable Horizons project is supporting this student project as one of the aims of SHE is to collect information and create new concepts of sustainable campuses.

Case 4: User-driven design

The aim of the project is to develop and validate a methodology for acquiring user-driven sustainable design and agile development skills and competences, so that graduating students are ready to face society’s complex challenges, such as climate change, depletion of energy and raw materials as well as the aging population. These complex issues require a comprehensively reformed way of thinking, which can be achieved by educating students to flexible, interdisciplinary (t-shaped) professionals with the ability to change existing practices in the working life and implement their knowledge and skills in their everyday life as well.

This integrated methodology for teaching, monitoring and assessing the user-driven sustainable design and agile development skills and competences is collaboratively developed and based on shared experiences and state-of-art knowledge in partner universities. Compiling shared knowledge and teaching materials in bio-circular building materials and awareness creation on the climate change, developing multidisciplinary education in collaboration with practitioners using agile and scrum methods, and sharing best practices in virtually enabled facility sharing and development of collaborative teaching between the partners are the main means to achieve the objective.

Credits

The 2-week study programme consists of lectures, workshops, excursions & teamwork. Completing the whole programme, preparatory work + virtual component + active participation + final presentation gives 5 ECTS. Evaluation passed/failed.

Summer School is free of charge, you only have to pay for your accommodation, travel and your living costs.

International Experience, Finnish Summer

We will have staff and students coming from 10 – 20 different countries. The social programme offers the opportunity to experience Finnish summer and culture with activities, such as sauna bathing and swimming in the lake. The midnight sun guarantees 24 hours of daylight!