“Is the future campus a miniature city or is the future city a learning environment?”

Case Live Baltic Campus –  A Guide for Future Campus Development

There are campuses in the Baltic region facing large-scale urban developments in the near future. Many of the partner campuses are strongly developing their existing campuses, and in some areas, entire campuses are moved to new locations. Campuses have a great impact on the surrounding cities, and they speed up scientific experiments, information exchange and new innovations. Future campus development is also driven by megatrends such as climate change and digitalization, whose impact can’t be overestimated. We have to prepare for the changes they bring about.

The project led by MUUAN consisted of the inquiry of the challenges and goals the partner campuses have in terms of urban planning as well as determining the core themes of campus development and elaborating on the themes with a select of experts. We also organized planning workshops facilitated by participatory design methods.

As one of the main goals of the project, we created the Development Ideas Book – a Guide for Future Campus Development for the different user groups of the campus areas (e.g. city planners, educational institutions and local residents). The Development Ideas Book introduces six important core themes of campus development, which are City, Change, Together, Bloom, Service and Heart. Theme City considers what the city can provide the campus and how the campus answers to the city. Theme Change focuses on studying sustainable solutions, preparing for them and adapting to them properly in the long term. Theme Together emphasizes the significance of multidisciplinary and transparent collaboration and the possibilities of participatory campus development. Theme Bloom deals with the relationship between ecology and economy and introduces collaboration between the business world and campus environments. Theme Service provides tools for the development of a 24/7 service environment and explores the prospect of turning information into services. Theme Heart stresses the significance of social and physical living environment and aims at making it one of the pillars of campus development.