Key Research Area: Health and well-being
Aalto University’s expertise in health and well-being is broad-based, with strong clusters of research groups such as in medical devices, health AI, neuroscience, and care-facility architecture.
H&W Architecture, Buildings, and Design
This cluster is a subarea of Aalto University’s health and wellbeing (H&W) key research area and includes expertise on architecture, buildings, and design.
Aalto has multifaceted expertise and several active work groups in the area relating to design and premises.
The Department of Architecture comprises study programs in architecture, landscape architecture, and interior architecture. The , which has been active since the 1980s, specializes in research on social and healthcare buildings and urban viability and health. Health and wellbeing topic areas have included design and new directions of hospitals and acute care, community health centers, end of life care facilities, and all levels of supported housing, as well as complex residential care. A recent consortium project explored integrated housing solutions for persons undergoing memory decline. Additional aspects of health and wellbeing and human centered design include, for example, sensory design, service design, universal design, therapeutic landscapes, and urban health. Health and wellbeing architecture takes focus not only on static matters, but also on how buildings function.
A professorial group in indoor air quality and interior environment has a span of expertise from the initial stages of design all the way through construction completion and subsequent maintenance. Indoor air quality research is conducted in an interdisciplinary research group, and the goal of the research is to ensure a healthy, safe, and comfortable indoor environment in buildings. Knowledge provided by research enables the prevention, identification, and correction of possible problems and hazards related to indoor air quality, as well as developing methods to ensure good indoor air quality.
Key Research Area: Health and well-being
Representative Research Groups and Major Projects
Collaborative and Industrial Design
The studies in Collaborative and Industrial Design (CoID) focus on design's role in society. Students develop skills enabling them to work as design experts and leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators in a range of roles within industry, business, communities, education, and the public sector.
Design Inside
Renewing societies requires world-leading design-based practices. The Design Inside initiative ensures we will have the world-class ability throughout Aalto to shape and explore the world around us.
Design integration and transformation network
Design integration and transformation network coordinates knowledge sharing across research focal areas in design.
Designing for Wellbeing consists of 12 projects which represent actual services or processes in the cities of Helsinki, Espoo, Kauniainen and Lahti. Projects address different dimensions of wellbeing, focusing in particular on municipal wellbeing services and patient-centered health care solutions.
ENCORE - Engaging Co-design Research Group
The ENCORE research group explores constantly application fields for co-design through hands-on exploration and ambitious research. The visionary competence stems mostly from industrial design spiced with engineering, architecture and anthropology.
InChildHealth will integrate health, environmental, technical and social sciences research to identify determinants for Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and evaluate their impact in environments occupied by school children.
Sampsa is Professor of Co-Design at the Aalto University School of Art, Design and Architecture in Helsinki, Finland. His research focuses on designer-user relations in sociotechnical change. This includes interest in areas such as participatory design, codesign, open and user innovation, open design, peer knowledge creation, citizen science and user knowledge in organizations, social shaping of technology, practice theory, process studies of innovation and sustainability transitions.
RESCUE is a three-year interdisciplinary project funded by the Academy of Finland and led by Aalto University, Department of Built Environment. The project consortium includes partners from Aalto University, the Department of Architecture as well as University of Turku and Tampere University. The study is multidisciplinary, a combination of futures studies, architecture, land use and spatial planning, and real estate economics.
The Strategic Design Integration and Management (SDIM) research group organises researchers with an interest in design management and the organisational adoption, implementation and leadership of designers and design-based practices at the Department of Design.
Professors active in the area
Aalto Networking Platform
The Aalto Networking Platform brings together research expertise across departments, supporting collaboration both inside and outside of Aalto.