Headquartered in Helsinki, Parkly was founded in 2021 by Päivi Raivio and Daniel Bumann and teamed up with urban designer Jalmari Sarla to transform urban spaces with a modular furniture solution for greener and happier public places and more liveable cities. Daniel’s home country Switzerland is one of the markets they are reaching for and they have a local partner in place.

Parkly consists of a dedicated bunch of urban designers and placemakers who are also problem solvers with creative solutions considering their design background. They transform public places with a modular, scalable solution and offer products and services for different stakeholders to add value and make the most of their spaces and premises.

Parkly came forward to be able to have an impact in our cities – to make them more green and liveable is important with the environmental challenges we are facing but also have value as such. Different urban spaces, big and small, have so much more potential and Parkly has a solution to untap that. In their design practice, they had found out that there is a need for a solution like Parkly: it combines the good elements of urban life, more greenery and social life.

Parkly was born out of a need for more greenery and social life

Parkly promotes the idea of greener public places whether it is squares, campus areas, or other places. More green means less rainwater management and alleviating the heat island effect, it can also be connected to urban farming. Good and inviting public places are also connected to, for example, promoting walkability: with nice stop-overs cities can create comfortable walking routes. They can also create a network of small gardens for pollinators.

Parkly modules are easy to mix and match, scale up and down, and use in various locations and purposes. Parkly is circular by design and is offered as a service too. Customised options and innovation enable totally new solutions for their clients. They use digital tools for planning and visualising and decentralised production enables them to realise international projects from the start.

With Parkly, the team wanted to make it as easy as possible to start improving the cities’ spaces faster. With the modular design as the basis, they can easily add new solutions and elements to the product catalogue as well as develop new ones together with their clients and collaborators. When they decided to connect the concept to circular design, it made more sense than they thought: as they are moving away from linear products and ownership, Parkly can also be offered as a service.

Parkly targets a bigger change!

Parkly uses lasting, sustainable materials such as high quality wood and pays attention to the recyclability and circularity both in materials as well as design. Parkly’s plant concepts are based on biodiversity and edible plants, connecting people and other species to the spaces they create. By creating these pockets of urban green they can communicate about the importance of greenery and pave the way for a bigger change.

Parkly works with several United Nations sustainable development goals, mainly sustainable cities and communities, but also such topics as innovation and infrastructure and responsible consumption. They also have a forest protection programme in place: for each module produced they make a donation to protect 20 sqm of old growth forest in Finland. They are hoping to double this with a match funding model with their clients.

Urban Tech Helsinki helps Parkly modules flourish around the city

Parkly has been in collaboration with Urban Tech Helsinki program and some results can be seen in such places as Forum Virium Helsinki Smart Kalasatama and B.green projects as well as with the city of Helsinki city planning department. Parky sees a lot of potential in different settings related to urban space and real estate development and wishes this fruitful collaboration will continue and expand.

Thanks to the advisors with wide knowledge and the programme with very good resources, Urban Tech Helsinki has been a great opportunity for Parkly to connect to like-minded companies which are striving for impact. Parkly team is running several projects and developing new solutions for their clients, but constantly learning about the market, opportunities and developing the business model and international partnerships. They are benefiting the most from the program with one-to-one discussions with the advisors and the workshops which are great for learning from others and peer support.

Parkly has already achieved their first goals this year: first projects abroad in the Netherlands and in Switzerland. Parkly aims to internationalise in certain markets and form solid partnerships in other countries too. They also want to define the production of the modules, target groups and hopefully grow their team!

They welcome team members with a good motivation and knowledge in marketing and sales. Seed funding would help them to push forward faster with growing their team, develop their digital platform and, for instance, pre-manufacture some modules for stock.
Parkly is working with a network model – innovative companies which share the same goals are inspiring partnerships for them – together they can create joint ventures and totally new products and services.

To learn more about Team Parkly, click here to visit their website.