While in Italy the Minister for Public Administration Renato Brunetta forces state employees to stand in traffic and queues, in Finland everything goes differently. Lahti uses his lakefront location to introduce remote work as we've never known it: literally remote. Very remote. In the open air of the forest, surrounded by nature.
Working with a group of students from the LAB Institute of Design and Fine Arts, the creative agency TBWA \ Helsinki and the local design company Upwood, the city of Lahti has developed and installed several remote workstations in parks and forests.
Some of them are found in the most remote areas of the wilderness, others remain in the parks closest to civilization. One, for example, is a 45-minute walk from the nearest car park, but promises stunning views of Lake Vesijärvi.
More distance than that!
Each mini workstation (removable to avoid damaging trees) features a desk surface with enough space for a laptop and notebook. There's also a built-in holder for phones, a cup holder hole (because caffeine isn't just for shoes) and a coat hanger. All obviously in the Scandinavian minimalist style: yes, I know what you're thinking of. It's not Finnish, but it's that thing over there, come on.
How much does this “bucolic” remote working space cost? Nothing. They are used freely, on a first-come, first-served basis: no costs for users, no costs for the environment. If I have to choose to spend an hour commuting to work, at least the work is surrounded by nature.
It's an extreme idea, and I see a lot of marketing in it, okay. But it's a starting point. The stations are also spartan in terms of services: you have to bring both connectivity (with a mobile phone as a hotspot) and energy (space for power banks of all sorts) from home. A deterrent to not staying too long monopolizing the stations, to make everyone use them.
Come out, don't push yourself back in
Umberto Onza, lead designer on this project from TBWA \ Helsinki, says his team wanted to create something that would draw people out of their homes and into nature again. "In the Nordic countries and Finland, people are always eager to be in the forest and close to nature (true, I talked about it here). We thought this was a nice way to encourage people to get back to normal."
Already. THEIR normality. Ours is made up of closed offices, evidently. Yet an intermediate path would also be sufficient: taking the opportunity to enhance remote working by also creating decentralized mini hubs. It is not compulsory for everyone to stay at their home, we could experiment with the possibility of creating places within a radius that can be covered on foot and in a short time (has Brunetta ever heard of the city of "15 minutes" or "superblocks“?). Our normality is positioned behind the normality of others.
A green capital: not just remote offices
Lathi's workstations are able to withstand even the heavy snowfalls of this winter, and are removed (as mentioned) when necessary, and then repositioned in spring. And that's exactly what the city plans to do. Also because the initiative was a resounding success.
There has been strong demand from across the city for more desks like these to be installed. and there have also been requests from other Finnish cities and from a museum in Sweden. His suggestion is to involve local artisans in their production process, to reduce the impact on the environment. No wonder Lathi was chosen as European Green Capital by a program devised by the EU Commission to focus on sustainability in urban places. The city parks are vital resources, and these workstations further highlight them, giving people even more reasons to visit and enjoy them.
Patience if remote workers fill a few places less than Starbucks cafes.
