The school planning in Finland is directed through two institutional systems of: costruction is guided primarily by the Land Use and Building Act, secondarily by the planning system and organizations which guide building design. Education, on the other hand, is guided by the Basic Education Act and various level curriculi. These organizations employ personnel at state, province and communal level.

A participation program has been created for the inhabitants (the users of built environment) to be heard in the different phases of planning. Still, when it comes to construction design the opinion of the user might not be heard. Post occupancy evaluation (POE) is a good indicator of the user experiences of finished sites. Planning workgroups often have user representatives.

Who is the descriptionary user of a school? In the workgroups school is often represented by the rector or an employee of the school or education department. When we're dealing with new construction projects (and projects in settled areas as well), the user might not be identified, but it's important to consider all user groups: The "teaching studying learning, TSL" users are teachers and pupils, and in addition to them the school has users in governmental, upkeep, food service, healthcare and hobby relations. Several projects also have participants from the corporate world.

Thus far the largest user group of school, the pupils, have not been represented in the planning workgroups. The pupils participate to the POE and Gåtur analyses when the school is in use; How can we give the pupils a chance to voice their opinions during the planning process?

The foremost target of InnoSchool research has been the Opinmäki school and campus in Espoo, which is being planned as the central activity spot in the Suurpelto housing area. The city of Espoo has organized a separately governed project to plan Suurpelto, and gathered
planning groups of wide expertise to the project. In the spatial planning (directed with good experience of the Technical Department), an innovative lightweight architectural competition will be held in the autumn of 2008. The identification of user groups has been done through
e.g. an Internet poll.

The phases of Opinmäki planning has been simulated in the SimLab and workshops concerning them has been held. Still, only grown ups have been able to participate. The InnoArch research has experimented with collaborative workshop planning in the Arkki architectural school for children and youth (see Sini Meskanen's research and master's thesis "Future School through Pupil's Eyes"), with fascinating results. Children and youth are the experts in the usage of their own environment, as most of adults are in their.

The ideas and sketches – and the reprocessed "Typologies of the Future School" – have been shown to the Espoo city workgroup of Opinmäki in an architectural workshop in February 2008. The intention was to use the data produced by Arkki as an enabling tool to pass information between the user groups. Both of the user groups are representative, but the pupils of Arkki specifically represent their age group – the age group which will be the future users of Opinmäki – and the representatives of Espoo workgroups have the role of future contractor customers.