Open Lecture: ENRIQUE SOBEJANO on 20th September

Enrique Sobejano, architect of Arvo Pärt Centre’s soon to be opened new building, to give a public lecture in Tallinn

Opening the architecture Open Lectures season on the 20th of September at 6 pm will be Enrique Sobejano. Sobejano is the founder and partner of Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, that won the architecture competition of the new building of Arvo Pärt Centre to be opened in October.

The Spanish architecture bureau received the prestigious Alvar Aalto Medal and became an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects in 2015. The Madinat al-Zahra Museum by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos in Spain received the European Museum of the Year award in 2012 and the Contemporary Art Centre Córdoba was shortlisted for this year’s Mies van der Rohe Award. Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos can be characterised by a subtle sense of material and detail and a skilful use of natural light. Equally important is the context and the experiential quality of each project. In his lecture, Enrique Sobejano will introduce the new building of Arvo Pärt Centre, to be opened in October 2018. He will describe what the intentions of the architects were and what kind of space they wanted to create.

From Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos website: “The Arvo Pärt Centre has been designed as a place for concentration and study, a space conceived in order to keep the creative legacy of the great Estonian composer alive. Set in a landscape of great beauty, in the middle of a dense forest of tall pines, the design originates from a geometric pattern formed by pentagonal patios. Variations of the size and position of the same generate spatial sequences that configure the different areas of the plan. The interior space is structured around a wall—a boundary within whose thickness are housed much of the facilities, in addition to serving as a dividing element between the public and private areas of the building. In the exterior, a single element highlights the architectural proposal: a large roof conceived as a folded platform to adapt to the different heights required in the interior. The facades are treated as a filter defined by a series of thin circular columns that make up the supporting structure of the roof. The greater or lesser density in the arrangement of the pillars allows for alternate areas of great transparency with others more protected from the natural light. A slender helical observation tower and a small chapel inserted in one of the patios, complete a project in which music, landscape and architecture come into resonance.”

Enrique Sobejano (Madrid, Spain, 1957) has graduated from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the Graduate School of Architecture and Planning at Columbia University in New York. He is professor at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK) and has been a visiting critic and lecturer at various international universities worldwide. From 1986 to 1991 he was co-director of the architectural journal ARQUITECTURA. He is a founding partner of Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos. The bureau has offices in Madrid and Berlin.

The Architecture and Urban Design department of the Estonian Academy of Arts has been curating the Open Lectures on Architecture series since 2012 – each year, a dozen architects, urbanists, both practicing as well as academics, introduce their work and field of research to the audience in Tallinn. All lectures are in English, free and open to all interested.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Johan Tali

www.avatudloengud.ee

https://www.facebook.com/EKAarhitektuur/

More info:

Pille Epner

arhitektuur@artun.ee