While until only a few years ago the major urban-design issue was adapting traditional ideas of public space to a new social culture based on discovery of ‘the other’, the diversity and the exercise of difference in everyone’s space, architecture today works on the transposition of the domestic to the workplace, to spaces of culture and consumption and to the city’s open spaces. “Mountain Man” area in the Aalto University Campus will be the place to live, work, study and research for many people, a place in which anywhere will be like being at home. The transformation of Mountain Man into EVERYONE’S HOME is our most cherished objective: harmonious coexistence between students, scientists and families in a unique combination in which young people predominate will lead to a tolerant, optimistic and creative community.
Our respond to the new campus approach follows the idea of the campus as an “Inno­vation Network”, focusing both on the im­provement of indoor and outdoor comfort with innovative building construction and conditioning, energy efficiency and re­newable substitution.
“Top environment” on a campus starts in the exterior. The new concept should improve the outdoor comfort on the campus in-between the buildings, by allowing a solar exposure and protecting against the cold south­west winds. The existing and the actual design proposal where analysed with computational fluid dynamics and solar exposure tools to map the key factors for out­door comfort and the results guided the masterplan development with recommended building shapes and heights as well as the decisions concerning landscape interventions and design.