A Smart urban furniture collection improving services for Smart Cities

LuxTurrim 5G+

Aalto Design Factory | Nokia & Spinverse
Design Researcher
Helsinki, Finland | 2020

Objective: to design a smart pole and its digital services concepts for LuxTurrim 5G+ project for Kera Nokia campus.

Contribution: design research, co-design workshops planning, functional analysis, Ambit design collection, the infographics’ structures, bench and bus stop prototypes manufacturing.

Smart cities are evolving into living ecosystems where technology, design, and human experience converge. By investing in social capital, mobility, and communication infrastructure, cities can foster sustainable growth while enhancing everyday life for their citizens. The arrival of 5G connectivity accelerates this vision, enabling autonomous vehicles, real-time services, and instant data flows that make urban environments more responsive and intuitive.

LuxTurrim 5G+ brings this future to life. Through strategically placed Smart Poles, the project creates both essential urban infrastructure and a dynamic data marketplace, transforming ordinary streets into platforms for innovation.

Research about Smart Cities

The project invited us to explore the smart city as a dynamic, interconnected ecosystem. From a design perspective, smart cities weave together services, products, and data to make urban life more intuitive and responsive. Sensors embedded throughout the infrastructure act as the city’s senses, collecting information that feeds into a central data marketplace. This data is then transformed into actionable insights, allowing city services to anticipate needs and automate processes in real time; creating a seamless dialogue between people, technology, and the urban environment.

The activities realized during the research were:

Online co-design workshops with citizens.
Desk research about emerging technologies trends and benchmarking.
In-depth interviews with experts.

Services & products

Guided by a citizen-centric approach, our work brought to life four Smart Furniture concept collections—Loop, Ambit, Edge, and Flow—immersively showcased through virtual reality. This was complemented by three full-scale prototypes and an infographic model, which together visualised the project’s product–service ecosystem, demonstrating how design, technology, and human experience intersect in the urban environment.

VR Ambit Collection

Drawing inspiration from the charm of traditional European cities, the Ambit collection embodies a sober, simple, and timeless aesthetic, subtly integrating technology to preserve the integrity of historic surroundings. Through careful material and form choices, Ambit balances functionality with restraint, creating furniture that feels both contemporary and contextually sensitive. As part of the team, I led the design of this collection, shaping its identity and ensuring that every detail harmonises with the urban heritage it inhabits.