Imagination Architectures and the Work of Trust | Veikko Eeva

"Spaces have soul. Soulless spaces are clad in new materials." Could digital product passports help the soul find its place in the new and reveal itself more clearly in what endures? My thoughts and reflections on how material reuse, interior design, and digital trust frameworks intertwine — prompted by an article in Helsingin Sanomat. In Finnish at https://lnkd.in/dMbPVtw3. The original Finnish exceperts in Helsingin Sanomat are translated into English by me. "Laajisto is perhaps Finland’s best-known and most accomplished interior architect. The leading design publication Dezeen listed her among the most important interior designers of the year. ‘I realised how the design process should really go. You can’t plan too far ahead, because you design according to what materials you find and how you begin to fit them together. Not form follows function but form follows resources. […] In Finland, that’s difficult — and that’s something to be developed. Laajisto speaks of a “building organ bank.” […] It could be an online library, a material bank where components from demolition sites could be listed for reuse, and where designers and builders can look for suitable materials. […] 'Spaces have soul. Soulless spaces are clad in new materials,' she says." — Helsingin Sanomat, 26 Oct 2025 It feels as if Joanna Laajisto is searching for a language to name something that has not yet taken shape — something moving along the edges of design, reuse, and ethics. Both terms, "material bank" and "building organ bank," tell us something: We may need banking, but not necessarily banks. At least not as banking is often understood, as something soulless or even extractive. "Organ bank" is at once perhaps clumsy and beautiful. Both a technical yet poetic description of a system that does not merely store, but transfers life. In the soul of space, materials are more than matter or residue. They are relationships, memories, and continuities. "Spaces have soul" touches something essential. Not only aesthetically, but in how soul enters spaces, how it fades, how life arises, and how it must continue. Digital Product Passports are energy — and atoms, too — but lighter than materials in our buildings. Perhaps through these trust frameworks, through this socio-legal-technical fiction, we can tell stories and frame meanings that carry soul — stories that make us want, and enable us, to build sustainably. In some way, the talks under Empowering and participatory states, cities, and communities at MyData Global (https://lnkd.in/dUAAtmTt). Also including mine, of which one version of the story is at https://lnkd.in/deTf_YBV. #dpp #digitalproductpassport #urban #architecture #design #interior #trust #imaginationinfrastructures