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Introduction

Aalto University, Department of Architecture / Group X, with Aalto University Campus and Real Estate ACRE, the City of Espoo, the Finnish MInistry of Education, The Royal College of Art (London) and European Commission Creative Europe Programme / Human Cities Project

A network platform for education

SaaS has been a joint project initiated by Group X to create a new concept for the use of teaching facilities and resources. Case High School was looking at how to organise one institutional service delivery – in this case, teaching – based on a flexible structure and external efficiency. SaaS is a social innovation, which was first tested with the City of Espoo and Aalto University Properties (ACRE)  in 2016 and now hosts three municipal upper secondary schools and an elementary school, which have moved to Otaniemi area in Espoo, Finland. This has been a massive exercise in temporary uses. The schools share spaces with Aalto University and other real estate owners, including physics and chemistry laboratories, library, as well as gastronomy, sports and art facilities. The schoolchildren have become active members of the district and the society. Reciprocally, the university campus is now more diverse and lively. Also many study courses of the university are open to school pupils and the schools provide pedagogical training and allow the university personnel use their advanced learning technologies. 

Designers

Antti Ahlava

Fernando Nieto

Jarmo Suominen

Natalia Vladykina

New kind of learning environment 

The SaaS solution developed by Group X (esp. Jarmo Suominen and Antti Ahlava) in collaboration with the City of Espoo and Aalto University Properties supports new ways of learning, increases the joy of learning and opens the school doors to joint operations and networking. It makes for more efficient use of space when the facilities are flexible and the rest of the environment is utilised in teaching.SaaS sees school as a service that supports learning comprehensively – not just a school building.  The starting point of the project was a new kind of organisation of education, in which learning takes place everywhere and at all times, in interaction with others. The conditions for teaching are designed on the terms of learning. Digitalisation enables a new kind of learning and strengthens the community spirit. The project also puts sustainable development into practice through the responsible use of space resources, recycling, sharing and support of social diversity. Co-operation creates good preconditions for the continuous development of education, thus improving the international competitiveness of the entire Finnish education chain. SaaS encourages  actors to work together and develop themselves so that everyone can feel like a part of the learning community. 

The students, teachers and parents have been strongly involved in building the SaaS campus. One of the upper secondary school’s tutors commented that "this is a cool project that gives a huge amount of motivation for studies". Another purpose of the project has been to test flexible and cost-effective operating models that can later be expanded and scaled up. The experiences and ideas gained can be used, for example, in situations where schools need to temporarily move to other premises. 

Service Architecture

Traditionally, a school is defined as an independent entity, as a building where all required resources are collected to establish a school. Learning is decoupled from the community and delivered in a standalone platform by teachers to students. This type of solution is characterized as a product, which could be innovative and flexible, but it is based on the logic where value is embedded in the product itself. A school is usually run in isolation from the environment, and the focus is on delivery of teaching, while students are subjects of this activity. The school is operated as a standalone facility, and the structure is static, enabling control of the environment. Characteristics of product logic at a typical school include a focus on internal efficiency and a static structure, enabling control and delivery of planned activities. The focus of product innovation is on product-specific standalone solutions with isolated operations and facility management. This type of solution requires extensive planning. Most of the investments are up front, and the investment risk and planning risk are high due to the time span of the production and the potentially turbulent environment of the solution. It is based on the idea of controlling all required resources and creating the conditions for pre-planned service delivery. The organization of education and delivery of teaching is currently resource consuming and static; it is based on a stand-alone solution with independent entities of education. 

Instead, SaaS emphasises service-oriented architecture, using blueprints to create innovative learning typologies with practical and social impact. SaaS is a concept that defines a school as a network of resources rather than a standalone building. The SaaS solution is to develop the service architecture of a school based on principles of service-dominant logic, and it is enabled by applications of the platform economy. SaaS uses a service platform both for institutional demand and to deliver education. The service architecture defines the conditions for value co-creation (learning). While the brief for the school has stayed almost the same, the deployment is different. The planning process includes mapping of local assets, identification of available resources, designing the “home base” and planning campus-wide resource usage. The focus was on a flexible structure and external effectiveness, as well as on the utilisation of existing resources and communities of learning to enable more connected learning environments and to create value together with other stakeholders in the learning community. Therefore , school is defined as a service, based on the network of resources around its home base. 

In practice, the study was identifying various resources of learning in close proximity of the “home base” for the school and was studying a model for resource operator, to enable dynamic optimisation of given school institution. This defines new “service architecture” for the school. The aim of the project has been to test this new solution by proposing interventions based on the goal of the solution and to evaluate them with, for example, an action research methodology. School operations were proposed to be executed in a network of resources rather than in a traditional standalone entity. 

While the traditional model could be described within the product-based logic, this new hypothesis is based on service dominant logic In the SaaS concept, a new service architecture defines a school as a set of resources for supporting learning. SaaS is sustainable by optimising and recycling the use of spaces and equipment and by increasing social diversity and sharing resources with the surrounding society. The school uses available shared resources within the community. Aspects of social learning are important, and the school is flexible and scalable. This is a systemic solution, where the focus is on external effectiveness and the structure is flexible. Pedagogy is focused on social and problem-based learning, emphasising 21st-century skills, critical thinking, creativity and communication and collaboration. This type of solution could be characterised as service innovation enabled by a resource operator. The focus is on value co-creation, and the structure is flexible. This enables new types of learning communities to emerge and increases opportunities for social learning. 

SaaS has been recognised as a sustainable model for future learning environments by the Finnish government. SaaS enables more adaptable and flexible solution for the delivery of education. It fosters social learning, by extending learning community beyond traditional environments and by utilising accessible resources at Aalto university’s campus. The solution was decreasing planning and investment risk, based on the adaptability of the network. It also has the impact on the increase of social density, interaction inside and between various groups and optimisation of the use of local resources, enabling more sustainable development of urban communities. 

Project Design Features

In accordance with schools having faced considerable changes in their pedagogical principles, one can expect a justified change from a traditional school building to a more flexible environment supporting varying needs and social learning. Networked services, service platforms and flexibility imply an underlying paradigmatic change: spaces and their uses become creatively decoupled. SaaS is designed as a platform for learning, which has the capacity to react to the changing needs of the schools. It offers new kinds of social and interactive learning experiences and fosters learners to take an active role in their education. Leaning on the engagement platform, this practice offers a user-based, cross-disciplinary approach to learning, supported by digital tools and framed by sustainable, resource-wise environment. 

Project Results

Compared to the earlier and conventional own building layout, there is 25 % smaller carbon footprint, 5 % annual saving, 150 % more upper secondary school applicants, 60 % flexible resources and over 40% increased pupil intake in 2019. According to student feedback, there is better symbolic value, better sense of fellowship and togetherness among students and more functional premises for modern learning.

Timeline

2015 Building Design Studio 1 course and Labs for Learners workshops by Aalto university and Royal College of Art in Espoo and London 

2015 JOT project (Flexible Spaces of Learning)

2015 Workshop with Tongji University

2015-18 Human Cities EU project

2016 Service Logic in Architecture course (Special Course in Urban Planning and Design) in collaboratiob with Ellen van Loon from Office of metropolitan Architecture (OMA)

2016 Implementation with Haukilahti upper secondary school in Aalto Campus. At first, 350 students of Haukilahti Upper Secondary School moved to Otaniemi. 

2016 The Mayor of Espoo's Award for Innovation

2016 Finnish Quality Association Award

2016 Espoo Medal for Innovation

2017 Map that Matters – a one-week workshop with the students of Haukilahti school.

2017 International Quality Innovation Award (Prague)

2017 Best Learning Community in Espoo Award

2017 The number of students on the Otaniemi premises icreased to 700.  

2019 Human City Design Award, Seoul, Soth Korea

2026 App. 1600 schoolchildren from different schools and 136 teachers are members of SaaS at the moment in Otaniemi area.

Articles on SaaS

• Nenonen, S. et al. (2016). Ohjeita käyttäjälähtöiseen oppimisympäristön kehittämiseen: Joustavat oppimisen tilat-kehityshankkeen tuloksia (The results of the flexible learning environment project). University of Helsinki and Aalto University.
• Ahlava, A., Suominen, J. and Rossi, S. (2017). Controlling Risks Through Flexibility and Urban Integration: The Regeneration of Otaniemi Campus in Finland,  In Handbook of Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development in Higher Education, Springer International Publishing AG, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-47868-5_2.
• Suominen, J. (2018). Cities as sustainable service platforms: A Framework for Institutional Service Delivery in the Urban Context. In Cross-Cultural Design: Applications in Cultural Heritage, Creativity and Social Development, Springer, pp. 371-390. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-92252-2_30.  
  Vladykina, N. (2021). The School as a Service. Goethe-Institut. . Acccessed in February, 2026.
• Vladykina, N., Campus Uribe, A., Ahlava, A. (2019). School as a Service: Platform for Learning in Upper Secondary Education operating on Aalto University Campus. Proceedings of the 5th IEEE International Smart Cities Conference: (IEEE ISC2 2019), pp. 300-306.  
• Ahlava, A. (2021). School as a Service. In Human City Design Award 2019: The Current Status and Vision of Human City Design, Seoul Design Foundation, pp. 140-145.