We originally launched Corelab in 2017 as an open innovation platform at Tampere University. The idea was simple: to make our research more visible, bring researchers and industry closer together, and create more opportunities for interaction around real estate development and the built environment.
Over the years, Corelab has grown beyond that original idea. It has supported research communication, events and collaboration not only in real estate development, but increasingly across different research fields within our faculty.
Now Corelab is taking a much bigger step.
In 2026, the name and the platform we have built over the past nine years are becoming the foundation for the new Corelab – COnstruction and Real Estate LABoratory, a multidisciplinary research centre at Tampere University.
Our ambition is to bring together research in real estate business, real estate and urban development, architecture and building design, construction management and economics, and building services engineering.
What makes this new phase particularly interesting is the combination of two perspectives.
First, we want to look at the built environment across its entire lifecycle – from design and construction to operation, maintenance, development and real estate business.
Second, we want to explore much more systematically how emerging technologies can transform that lifecycle. An important part of this will be Corelab AI, our new research, development and experimentation environment for artificial intelligence in the built environment.
At the same time, we will continue something that has been at the heart of Corelab from the beginning: creating stronger connections between research, companies and other actors shaping the built environment.
Having been involved in building Corelab from the beginning, it feels particularly meaningful to now lead the operational development of this next phase.
Our goal is ambitious: to build Corelab into a multidisciplinary research environment that produces excellent science, enables genuinely new research collaborations and helps turn new knowledge and technologies into a smarter, more sustainable and more user-centred built environment.
And in many ways, our work together is only just beginning.
Jukka Puhto, D.Sc (Tech.)
Head of Corelab Research Centre
Faculty of Built Environment
Tampere University
jukka.puhto@tuni.fi
