According to Helsinki Urban Facts and Hypo statistics,300,000 houses are vacant today in Finland, which are 8.2% of all houses. 28,000 of them are in the capital, Helsinki.
Society Lab is a platform that will connect and merge request and offer.
Asylum seekers with vacant houses.
Considering a number of 35,000 asylum seekers to arrive in Finland, and the amount
of vacant houses in Finland, we developed the idea of creating a system that will connect the two together, optimising and managing all resources.
Following this idea, there will be no need for unnecessary constructions, instead we propose to make a better use of the existing resources.
The project will consist a first step towards integration: on one hand, refugees won’t be dwelled in new quarters risking to be segregated from the rest of the society and on the other hand, local citizens would have the possibility to interact and know the asylum seekers and benefit from their presence.

The core idea is to use the funding from the state (and eventual authorities es. european community) that would have been used for new constructions, to sponsor the first 12 months of rent in the Finnish vacant apartments.

The Society Lab system would evolve according to the Micro and Macro time frames.
During the Micro time frame, the first 12 months, the asylum seeker will learn the language and compensate with working activities and education/school programs,encouraged to get independent by the end of the first period.
In the Macro time frame, asylum receivers will be ready to become an active and integrated part of the finnish society, being able to pay for accommodation, to work and to communicate, creating relations with the local communities and surrounding.

Nowadays the majority of people use smartphones or other devices to communicate and asylum seekers are no exception to that. In fact, various mobile applications have helped them in their way to their final destination. Our proposal allows the asylum seekers to inform, exchange, look and eventually find an accommodation even before his/her arrival to Finland.

The system must be simple and intelligible. Both the Finnish citizens and asylum seekers will create an user profile and will become part of the Society Lab community.
further, users will upload data to the system: Finnish citizens upload information about vacant houses available for rent and, the asylum seekers can express their needs, regarding housing and/or make visible what are his/her skills to the community. All the
data will be integrated into a city map interface, where intuitively one can understand what it is available in the city.
For non digital users, special points will be create in the city public space in order to share the implementing database will all possible citizens and seekers. These points will function both as info-point and recreation and meeting spaces.

We believe that integration in its complete form stays in the relations between ‘give and take’.
Therefore, Society Lab data base will include a wide range of subcategories of seek/offer: job, education and cultural exchange. This Dynamism will create a first encounter between Finnish citizens and none, which could be developed then into relationships in the physical space.
Following this system, we believe an full integration can be achieved in the Finnish society, creating new dynamic cities rich and plural.

Design: Cecilia Danieli, Omri Revesz, Mariana Riobom