Campus development

A vibrant university campus that is closely integrated into the urban structure is important to a city’s attractiveness

SYK is a major regional player in all university cities outside the Greater Helsinki region. The starting point of our campus development is the idea of the campus as part of the city. Our aim is to integrate campuses into the urban structure.

Campuses can be made vibrant by bringing in the business sector, services and housing and by ensuring that they are easily accessible by public transport and bicycles.

We support the operations of higher education institutes by developing campuses into attractive and sustainable learning and innovation environments that support our customers’ success in intensifying international competition and promote the vitality of the regions where they are located.

Campus strategies enter the zoning stage

We finished a four-year project in 2016 by completing the campus strategies of each of our campuses. The campus strategies provide the foundation for the development of land use and activities on the campuses. Next, the campus strategies will enter the zoning stage. Work on zoning has already begun in Joensuu, Kuopio, Lappeenranta and Oulu.

Read more about the campus strategies

One of the highlights of 2016 was the Win Peaks seminar based on our campus strategy development. Held in Helsinki, the seminar was attended by more than 100 invited guests, including the nation’s leading decision-makers, university executives and other active players in university cities.

The seminar also marked the start of our Muurinmurtajat campus tour, which saw us visit municipal executives in various university cities. The purpose of the tour was to discuss common guidelines for integrating campuses into their surrounding urban structures and the business sector.

Tackling challenges with a resource-efficient approach

The challenge in campus development is identifying the right concepts for premises vacated by universities to ensure that they are occupied in sensible ways in the long term.

We aim to find resource-efficient solutions to this challenge. We do not build any unnecessary new space. Instead, we renovate existing premises whenever possible, which is also in line with our commitment to sustainable development. In spite of the challenges, we see a positive future for campus development. Cooperation between the business sector and universities will increase as businesses increasingly find their way to campuses. Examples of businesses that began operating on campuses in 2016 included Terveystalo, Subway, Huawei, Natural Resources Institute Finland LUKE and Oulu University of Applied Sciences.