Keskustakirjasto 2017

Crisp morning air gusts in through the windows, with the flip charts and post-it notes fluttering in the breeze. Markers in different colours have been scattered around the room in deliberate patterns. Everything is ready. People start to arrive, a little early, nervous, expectant, excited. Soon, some of them are already at the table tapping on their laptops, one takes out a knitting project – here we already have something quick and electronic and something hand-made and slow side-by-side, just like it should be in the maker culture. The first lively conversation is already in progress, and the back row is buzzing.

Lead users in hacking, fablabbing and maker culture, people who live the future trends already years before the mainstream, have been invited into the workshop. The first impression they give is already a multi-faceted image of the different subcultures of DIY and making stuff. The people involved include experts from IT firms to festivals, freelance creators to entrepreneurs, civil activists to coders – everything from ties to fuzzy hairdos, from people wearing Woody Allen glasses to sneaker aficionados. Read more »

The workshop designed for pedagogues produced numerous ideas for turning the Central Library into a picnic place for children and families.

”An urban campfire site for urban families, a meeting place for generations…A rooftop garden for cultivating plants and literature…A large, inner-city playground in the library courtyard…”

Helsinki’s Annantalo provided shelter from a snowstorm and a spark for a Central Library project, planned by a group of professionals working in the field of early education. What kind of space could the new library be for children, families, people of all generations? The Idepro workshop sought to answer this question. The group included operators from various fields of children’s culture, including Koulukino, Mediametka, Annantalo and word art schools. Each group was asked to select four most important areas to be observed in the planning of the Central Library. The enthusiastic discussion highlighted four themes. Read more »

The janitor provides directions: ‘Just take the lift to the fourth floor!’ and soon we are seated on the cosy top floor of activity centre Happi, our eyes scaling the rooftops of Helsinki as we wait for the Central Library youngsters’ workshop to begin. ‘The last episode of Putous was no good,’ reports an upper-secondary-school-aged workshop participant sitting next to me. The youngster flashes a beautiful smile and gazes expectantly toward the video projector light. The theme of the day is reflected on the screen: ‘The Central Library – a future workshop for young people, method: video opinion essays’. Read more »

This year, the Central Library project ball is in the court of the city’s inhabitants and the project partner groups: what kind of library or ‘urban town hall’ do they want to see in Töölönlahti in 2017? This is genuine interaction – a building that is still under construction, yet already lives through its users. Read more »