Aarne is an assistant researcher and architect at the InnoRenew CoE, currently in charge of the design development of the new building of the InnoRenew Center of Excellence.

He was born in Turku, Finland and studied architecture and urban planning at Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University) and TU Berlin. During the past 15 years, he has been working on many construction and development projects as a design team member and project manager in the fields of residential architecture, cultural and educational buildings, and urban renewal, chiefly in Finland and Slovenia, where he is running Atelje Prelovšek architectural studio with Eva Prelovšek since 2008. He has been also curating and designing exhibitions for Month of Design in Ljubljana in the recent years.

In his Master’s thesis for Aalto University, he proposed urban renaissance for the fragmented railyard district of his native hometown, traditionally built-up in timber and brick but later largely replaced by concrete and asphalt. Since then, he has been increasingly interested into the unused potential of the cities and towns as healthy, workable, and stimulating environments to live in.