Design as a strategic tool for sustainability in northern and arctic contexts : case study of the arctic design concept in Finland
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Globally, design is increasingly being perceived as a strategic tool for community development, well-being and innovation, both in theory and in practice. In the last few years, Finland has brought this notion to its northernmost regions through their emerging Arctic Design concept. While the concept has gained a lot of momentum, it remains, at this time, mostly Finnish-bound. Through a case study methodology, this thesis examines the ideas and visions underlying the concept of Arctic Design, and assesses its relevance for other northern regions, and in particular the province of Quebec, Canada. The data was collected through semi-directed interviews, conducted in northern Finland with leading actors involved in the concept’s strategic development. The theoretical framework employed draws on the perspectives of strategic design, sustainable design, and Nordicity (Hamelin, 1975). This study shows that design professionals are increasingly acting as key members within transdisciplinary projects and strategic areas, in order to address complex issues related to policy-making and broader societal change. This, in turn, opens up new avenues for both design practice and research in the topic of “northern design”. In particular, these findings suggest that design could play new roles in addressing northern and Arctic issues, by acknowledging local specificities (i.e. climates, socio-political frameworks, cultures) and allow the development of place-based solutions. By doing so, the province of Quebec could better use design as a catalyst of transitions towards sustainable futures among all its communities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.025 | 0.014 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".