Topic outline

  • Welcome to the Aalto ARTS Summer School - Living with Woods! Our main focus here is to help you ‘learn about sustainable use of wood and forests and designing in balance with nature’. This is a unique chance to learn and develop your ideas in an international, multidisciplinary context and experience hands-on work in high-quality workshops of Aalto University.​

    The mission of the summer school is to look for sustainable ways to use forests both in their natural form and as an industrial resource and create living environments using wood and in balance with surrounding nature. We’ll also study the importance of forest with a wide scope from biodiversity and production of ecosystem services to economically managed forests and wood building processes and the ethics related to it. The course introduces you to the different viewpoints of forest and uses of forest and wood. The aim is to give an understanding of the role of forest in:


    • preserving biodiversity

    • as habitat for other species

    • water, nutrient and carbon cycle

    • climate and erosion regulation

    • industrial use of wood

    • building with wood

    • wellbeing and recreation


    The content of the summer school courses was created in collaboration with academics from this year’s partner universities: The New School: Parsons School of Design, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Politecnico di Milano, Royal College of Art, École nationale supérieure de paysage and Delft University of Technology.


    The initiative’s aim is to invite international students to the Aalto University in order to build capacity for collaboratively solving the big challenges of our time. Teaching will be implemented through co-teaching both on-site at the Otaniemi campus and online. ​


    LEARNING ACTIVITIES ​

    Credits: 6 ECTS = 162 study hours  


    • Pre-assignment (1,5 ECT): the summer school was kicked off with a pre-assignment. The findings from the pre-assignments will be presented to the students in the beginning of the two weeks on campus.

    • Face-to-face teaching sessions: the mornings will be dedicated to lectures, workshops and seminars led by academics from the world’s leading design and technology universities.​

    • Group Task - Design Project: During the two weeks on campus students will carry out group projects studying the themes of the summer school. Students will produce designs for new living environments in balance with nature. Most afternoons are dedicated to group work, production work at the ARTS workshops, tutoring and feedback sessions, which will finally lead to an exhibition at the Väre building lobby on the last day of the summer school.