Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2010 | Page 22

Factory 2.0
Aalto University
introduces next
practice workshops

alto University will begin operating
in January 2010, opening up a new
world of possibilities for multidisciplinary education and research. The lofty
goal of the new education powerhouse is to
become an international elite university in
ten years.
Tuula Teeri, President of the Aalto University, says that the objective is so demanding that the next decade is bound to be a
busy one.
“We must work in a highly organised
manner to achieve this target,” she says.
Teeri’s recipe for success includes troubleshooting – preferably in advance – and constantly finding new ways of operating.
“We must do things in new ways and
forge new partnerships along the way.”

A

Brain Power
Leading the charge into the brave new future, there are the Factories. These new “expertise workshops” are based on areas in
which the three universities already cooperate. The Factories are environments for
learning, teaching, research, and co-creation. Within the Factory concept, academic
teams and projects, as well as companies or
communities, work together to create something new.
The existing Factories are Design Factory, Media Factory and Service Factory –
but that is not to say that their number is set
in stone. Tuula Teeri explains that the core
idea behind the Factory ideology is to keep
them dynamic:
20 Nordicum

Photos: Janne Lehtinen

Finland is known its education edge,
but it has been lacking a worldclass university. Aalto University
– a newly created entity resulting
from the merger of three Finnish
universities: the Helsinki School of
Economics, the University of Art and
Design and the Helsinki University
of Technology – wants to remedy this
situation.