Category: Making Space

The defense of the BA diplomas of the Department of Interior Architecture will take place this year on two days, Monday and Tuesday, June 3-4, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. in EKA (room A403). Eleven students have to defend their works, whose works can be viewed at the same time at the TASE exhibition in the EKA building.

The TASE exhibition is open from May 29 to June 16, every day from 12:00 to 18:00. Step through!

Monday, June 3
Presenting students: Kristiina Theresa Kuusik, Harold Kiisler, Marleen Armulik, Elle Marie Randoja, Laura Movits, Trine Tõniste.

Tuesday, June 4
Presenting students: Mirjam Vaht, Elisabeth Perk, Jaan Repnikov, Getter Pihlak, Sven Christian Arthur Samyn.

The theses were supervised by Anna Kaarma, Grete Tiigiste, Jaan Evart (portfolio), Malle Jürgenson, Ville Lausmäe, Veiko Liis and Jüri Kermik (project).

The theses are evaluated by a committee consisting of Gregor Taul (chairman), Mariann Drell, Kristiina Voolaid, Merilin Tee, Peeter Klaas.

The defense of this year’s master’s theses of the Department of Interior Architecture will take place on Tuesday, May 28 at 10:00 – 15:30 at EKA, room A501. There will also be a live broadcast of the defenses, which can be watched on EKA TV.

Schedule:

10.00 – 10.45 Ann-Katriin Kelder “The Rent Included Three Hounds, or The Alternative Clubs of Tallinn”. Reviewer Brigitta Davidjants.
10.45 – 11.30 Viktoria Ugur “Excavation manifesto. Exploring underground spaces”. Reviewer Mirell Ülle.
11.30 – 12.15 Karen Isabel Talitee “Restoration of destroyed (interior) architecture. From copy to innovation. Using the example of Maakri 28”. Reviewer Liisa Hagelberg.

Lunch break 12.15 – 13.15

13.15 – 14.00 Piret-Liis Carson “Recess rooms that support students’ mental and physical health”. Reviewer Kadri Klementi.
14.00 – 14.45 Päär-Joonap Keedus “I-architecture. Master’s diary”. Reviewer Urmas Lüüs.
14.45 – 15.30 Anni Truu “Towards the urban interior: the potential of interior architecture in the activation of urban space following the example of Kitseküla”. Reviewer Alina Nurmist.

The master’s theses were supervised by Mariann Drell, Pavle Stamenović and Gregor Taul.

The master’s theses are evaluated by a committee consisting of Malle Jürgenson (chairman of the committee), Manten Devriendt, Ardo Hiiuväin, Liina Langemets, Martin Melioranski and Andrea Tamm. The secretary of the committee is Marie-Katharine Maksim.

You can see the works of interior architecture master’s students at the TASE exhibition on the second floor of the EKA building and at the TASE online exhibition. The exhibition is open from May 29 to June 16, every day from 12:00 to 18:00. Step through!

SISU is a major event in the field of Estonian interior architecture and spatial design, which deals with topics related to interior architecture. The symposium has become a meeting place for recognized theorists and practitioners in the field of (interior) architecture from all over the world. This year’s SISU will take place from the 13th until the 2oth of June  in the premises of the National Archives film archive in Pelgulinn. The focal point of SISU is an exhibition and the accompanying symposium, which will take place on 13th of June at 5.00 p.m.

The title of this year’s exhibition … And Nothing is Forever refers to the question of temporality in spatial design. Participants from all over Europe were asked to open up the current state of their profession through one artefact that was to be sent to Tallinn with the smallest size box of the international postal service. Both found objects and works created especially for this event will be on display at the symposium. However, the participants had to take into account the fact that after the end of the exhibition they wouldn’t get back their works. The objects will be put back in the boxes and they will remain in the building as a unified time capsule. 

The curators of the Time Capsule project, Aet Ader, Karin Tõugu Gregor Taul and Pavle Stamenovic, invited 50 individuals and offices from Estonia and abroad to participate in SISU this time, and half of them responded with an artefact. Among the participants are interior architects, architects, designers, artists, urban activists, material researchers, furniture makers, creative researchers as well as performance artists, all of whom have come into contact with the field of interior architecture in one way or another. Attempts have been made to capture the spirit of the era and the profession both through text-based manifestos and ephemeral mock-ups.

In the exhibition, the artefacts enter into a dialogue with the cells of the Ristiku 84 building, which was built as a prison for the Tallinn garrison in the 1950s. It is a unique horseshoe-shaped prison, which reflects the 18th century English enlightener Jeremy Bentham’s idea of a penitentiary as a panopticon. Although the neoclassical prison underwent a thorough renovation in the 1990s when it was converted into an archive, the cells on the first floor were left intact. Films have been shot in these rooms, and architecture enthusiasts have been able to get to know the house as part of the annual Museum Nights, but the house is unknown to the general public. It may happen that it will stay that way, because it is not known what the state will do with the building after the Film Archive moves out. It is not a listed building, moreover, the building is in poor condition, has a somewhat tainted history and is located on a valuable plot. Based on current practice, the entire complex – along with the “buried” SISU 2024 time capsule – is threatened with demolition.

The SISU exhibition opens at 3 p.m on the 13th of June. At 4 p.m there will be a guided tour in the Film Archives building led by its director Eva Näripea. The symposion will take place from 5 p.m to 7 p.m. The exhibition will remain open from the 14th to the 20th of June, Mon-Thu 9 a.m to 5 p.m, Fri 9 a.m to 4 p.m. Further information in English below.

SISU is supported by the Cultural Foundation, the Ministry of Culture, Film Archive of the National Archives of Estonia and the Estonian Association of Interior Architects. In addition to the curators, Gregor Taul and Annamari Nael from the EKA Department of Interior Architecture and graphic designer Anna Kaarma belong to the organizing team of the symposium.

Initial list of participants:

45 degrees (Greece/Germany) – https://www.forty-five-degrees.com/

Hanna Loora Arro

Ljubica Arsic (Serbia/Switzerland) – https://ljubicaarsic.com/

Masayo Ave (Japan/Germany) – https://www.masayoavecreation.org/

Jean Jacques Balzak (France) – https://www.instagram.com/jeanjacquesbalzac/

Laurens Bekemans (Belgium) – https://bcmaterials.org/

Katarina Bonnevier (Sweden) – https://mycket.org/

Janka Csernak (Hungary) – https://mome.hu/en/people/janka-csernak

Aleksandr Delev (Germany) – https://www.aleksandrdelev.com/

Davor Eres (Serbia) – https://ifdt.bg.ac.rs/dt_team/eres-davor/?lang=en

Failed Architecture (Holland) – https://failedarchitecture.com/

Caterina Figuera (Spain/Switzerland) – https://rotativestudio.com/

Ana Filipovic (Germany) – https://www.ana-filipovic.com/

Daniel Fuchs (Switzerland) – https://bach-muehle-fuchs.ch/

Atelier Gapont (Liechenstein) – https://ateliergapont.li/

Tinatin Gurgenidze (Georgia/Germany) – https://www.instagram.com/post_soviet_space/

Matilde Igual (Spain) – https://matildeigual.eu/

Silvia Ingver

Jüri Kermik – https://www.kermikdesign.com/

Keithy Kuuspu – https://www.keithykuuspu.com/

Kuidas.works – https://kuidas.works/

LLRRLLRR – https://llrrllrr.com/

Milica Lopičić (Serbia/Germany) – https://www.lopicic.de/

Urmas Lüüs – https://urmasluus.com/

Tom Vam Malderen (Malta) – https://tomvanmalderen.com/

Philip Mecke (Germany) – https://www.philipp-mecke.com/

Arnita Melzoba and Kārlis Melzobs (Latvia) – https://gaissarhitekti.lv/

Jelena Mitrovic (Serbia) – https://poligon.rs/

mitte_tallinn – https://www.instagram.com/mitte_tallinn/

Maria Muuk, Nele Kurvits, Aimur Takk

Platvorm – https://www.platvorm.ee/

Laura Pormeister

Miro Roman (Croatia/Switzerland) – https://miro.romanvlahovic.com/

Sampling (Latvia) – https://www.sampling.lv/

SPOLKA (Slovakia) – https://spolka.cc/

Sven Samyn

Dubravka Sekulić (Serbia/United Kingdom) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubravka_Sekulić

Sander Joosep Siigur

Linda Marie Zimmer

Pent Talvet – https://www.iseasi.ee/

Margus Tammik, Mari Möldre, Ulla Alla, Merilin Kaup – https://vares.space/

TEN studio (Serbia/Switzerland) – https://ten.studio/

Kristi Tšernilovski

Stuudio TÄNA – https://stuudiotäna.ee/

Mari Uibo

Linda-Marie Urke

Tüüne-Kristin Vaikla – https://www.vaiklastudio.ee/people/tuune-kristin/

Kristina Õllek – https://kristinaollek.com/

Mirell Ülle – https://www.tervislikruum.ee/

On Wednesday, April 24, from 17:30 to 19:00, there will be an information session on the master’s degree program in interior architecture. The meeting will take place in the common area of the Faculty of Architecture students of the EKA study building on the fourth floor (C-400). We will also broadcast the meeting on Zoom, which will also be recorded. The event will take place in Estonian.

In the information session, the head of the curriculum, Gregor Taul, will give an overview of the courses and projects that have taken place so far, on the one hand, and give a more detailed overview of the plans for next year. In addition, we will talk about admission and try to answer your questions.

You can familiarise yourself with the curriculum in advance in Tahvel. We also recommend looking at the department’s latest newspaper. Current information about student activities can also be found on the department’s website and on Facebook and Instagram.

If you are interested, please register via the Google form.

On November 16 at 6 p.m Philipp Teufel from Düsseldorf will explore the questions of exhibiting design with the lecture “Exhibition Design. Exhibiting Design. Exhibiting Happiness”

The lecture gives a visual insight into the Master’s programme Exhibition design – EDI and a first glimpse of the latest project together with the Estonian Academy of Arts – a concept for the traveling exhibition ”Japanese Happiness”.

EDI, the Exhibition Design Institute of the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences, is a joint institute of the departments of architecture and design that bundles research foci and academic work on the topics of exhibition design, scenic design and museum design. The Exhibition Design programme deals with the broad panorama of design in relation to communication in space in the context of exhibitions.

One focus of the institute is on the history of exhibitions and their design, especially in a socio-cultural context. The second focus is on the exhibiting of design. Questions in exhibiting design are: How does one deal with the decontextualisation of the exhibited? What conflicts arise when exhibiting design, when concepts meet concepts and design meets design? How can design objects communicate with the exhibition visitor? Are design exhibitions only elitist events by designers for designers? What are the objectives, ideas, concepts of design exhibitions? How to make sensual and haptic qualities of design objects accessible?

Professor Philipp Teufel studied visual communication and scenography at the HfG Gmünd University of Applied Sciences in Schwäbisch Gmünd. From 1985 to 1995, he was a partner at the conceptdesign agency in Frankfurt am Main. Until 2007, Teufel was a partner at the nowakteufelknyrim design studio, and from 2008 to 2017, he was managing director of the malsyteufel studio. As artistic consultant for scenography, he supported the Humboldt Forum in the Berlin Palace from 2010 to 2015. Philipp Teufel has been teaching and researching in the field of 3D communication at Hochschule Düsseldorf – University of Applied Sciences for more than 25 years and is currently a member of the Federal

Ministry of Finance’s Art Advisory Board. He has also been a jury member of Red Dot since 2015 and currently curates and designs exhibitions on the Anthropocene and on green urban living (“Grüntopia” and “Transition Now”).

Everyone from the fields of architecture, design, art, media and art research interested in the questions of exhibition design and exhibiting design are welcome to join! The lecture will be in English and is free of charge.

Further information:

Gregor Taul
gregor.taul@artun.ee
Lecturer
Department of Interior Architecture
Faculty of Architecture
Estonian Academy of Arts

In autumn 2023, the open architectural lectures will take place under the title Mobile Masters. The theme brings architects and theorists to Tallinn, who analyse architecture’s flexibility and the mobile practices of architects, spatial designers and artists.

Gregor Taul, the curator of the autumn lectures, introduces the program with the following words: “Architecture stands at a significant crossroads. Ten-year-old buildings are demolished and taken to the landfill. The lifespan of an interior design project is five years at best, if that. These bleak facts do not inspire confidence in a discipline that requires so many resources in light of such a short time perspective. What does ‘better not do anything’ mean for spatial design? What might ‘mobile architecture’ refer to or who is a ‘mobile designer’? How can moving people or things be a positive spatial practice?”

On September 28, Keith Murray will be on the EKA main hall stage in Tallinn with the lecture “MOBILITY: Abstract/Actual/Affect”

Keith Murray is a Zimbabwean born architect, designer, sculptor and jewelry artist who has lived in the UK since 1988. Murray trained as an architect in Cape Town, South Africa and has worked as an architect and lecturer in South Africa, Zambia, Uganda, London and Brighton. About ten years ago, Murray retired to Suffolk on the east coast of the British Isles, where he built an eco-house for himself and his partner and has focused on making sculptures and jewelry from natural and found materials.

Keith Murray introduces his lecture in the following words:

The talk draws on personal experience/interests/thoughts of the last 50 years. Divided into three topics mainly to give some structure, but these will overlap and interweave, as they do in real life. 

ABSTRACT – From the Industrial revolution to the Technological revolution, in the last 150 years everything has got faster and faster. This acceleration has affected all aspects of our lives. Including Art, especially Sculpture (Calder is an obvious topic, but Caro and Smith are also looked at), literature, poetry. 

ACTUAL – Mobility in Architecture discussed using a few selected examples. Things now made, materials and techniques used, changing demands, some for good, some for bad. Just how bad is becoming more and more obvious, so responsible awareness and action is essential. 

AFFECT – Immigration and emigration, the spread of knowledge but also the awareness of things lost, left behind but impossible to forget. 

The open lectures are intended for students and professionals of all disciplines, not just the field of architecture. All lectures take place in the large auditorium of EKA, are in English, free of charge and open to all interested parties. Be there!

Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Department of Architecture and Urban Design of EKA brings to the audience in Tallinn every academic year about a dozen unique practitioners and valued theoreticians of the field. You can watch lectures from previous years on YouTube.

Autumn lectures

– September 28  at 6 pm Keith Murray (https://www.instagram.com/keithmurray5199/)

– October 26 at 6 pm Alexander Roemer (https://constructlab.net/)

– November 23 at 6 pm Laurens Bekemans (https://bc-as.org/)

– December 7  at 6 pm Katarina Bonnevier (https://mycket.org/)

The lecture series is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Curator: Gregor Taul

www.avatudloengud.ee

Dear cooperation partner, colleague, and community member!

We would like to invite you to the opening of the floating smoke sauna “Püha Viha” (Holy Anger/Holy Whisk) made by the students of Interior Architecture of the Estonian Academy of Arts, the Antsla municipality and the community on Tuesday, September 29 at 14:00 by the Tsooru lake in the Antsla municipality.

A bus leaves for the opening from Tallinn in front of the EKA building (Põhja pst 7) at 09:00 and returns to Tallinn at approximately 19:00.

Please let us know if you are coming or want to come to Antsla by bus ordered by EKA HERE. There are still some vacancies.

Department of Interior Architecture of the Estonian Academy of Arts

Antsla Municipal Government

*

Additional information:

Annamari Nael
Study assistant – project coordinator
annamari.nael@artun.ee
+372 53413970

We kindly invite you to the exhibition and final grading of Urban Studies and Interior Architecture Urban Models studio tutored by Kristi Grišakov & Keiti Kljavin. Please join us 1st of April, 15:00 in the EKA courtyard. The exhibition has been collectively curated by students of urban studies, architecture and urban planning and interior architecture. 

Urban decline in East-Estonia presents itself in a state of flux: it is tied to the area’s contested past but also allows a peek into the future. Multiple facets of shrinkage manifest in landscapes of extractivistic production, where the line between nature and man-made environment is increasingly difficult to draw. Although urban shrinkage is often associated with deteriorated buildings, abandoned and fragmented urban environments, if we choose to look through another lens there are multiple layers of phenomenologically dense experiences of decline that can provide acceptance and perseverance. Whether shrinking cities are distressing cities is a point of contention that urges us to rethink why cities are only ever received positively and linearly through growth, and whether or why shrinkage is seen as the opposite of growth. Should it be?

The Urban Models studio and its final project Caring for Ida-Viru? Tracing Frontiers of Shrinkage explores various questions related to tangible and intangible aspects of habitation in Ida-Viru county. Urban districts and towns of Ahtme, Järve and Kiviõli, where changing policies and approaches in urban governance aim to respond to the surplus of housing caused by the outmigration of people are in focus. Students of urban studies, architecture and interior architecture collaborated in exploring, reinventing and rethinking approaches towards shrinkage, adaptation and re-use. Some try to trace the stories that are subsumed in the industrially toxic air of Ida-Virumaa. Others attempt to take a peek into the everyday life that has somehow frozen in time. The students’ used relevant literature and explored case studies with experimental media and techniques in order to deliver final projects challenging the condition of shrinkage in Eastern Estonia. 

Students: Paula Veidenbauma, Ljudmila Funika-Müür, Kush Badhwar, Augustas Lapinskas, Karen Isabel Talitee, Kelli Puusepp, Nabeel Imtiaz, Luca Liese Ritter, Julia Freudenberg, Kristiina Puusepp, Paul Simon, Christian Hörner, Hannah Mühlbach, Loviise Talvaru, Khadeeja Farrukh, Nora Soo, Jannik Kastrup. 

Guest critics: Roland Reemaa (https://www.rloaluarnad.com/), Gregor Taul (EKA), Jüri Kermik (EKA), Johanna Holvandus (TÜ)

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Opposing the Desert 

EKA courtyard terrace

an interactive installation by Paula Veidenbauma and Ljudmila Funika-Müür

Shrinking cities are aging cities. Enclosed by panels, slippery roads, railway tracks, and liminal landscape, elderly tend to be tied closely with their homes, not receiving enough soft care from the local municipality. While focusing on the topic of the invisibility of loneliness amongst the retried, the project tackles spatial isolation while looking at it from the perspective of the city district of Ahtme. It investigates public space in relation to a private space once inhabited by a senior teacher living in Ahtme’s Sõpruse street Soviet panel building. The installation tackles the findings revealed through critical geography, in parallel exploring the state of social services in Ahtme. How many borders does one have to overcome in order to be cared for? Can public space enable caring relationships between people, place, and materials, towards a city interested in investing resources beyond growth?

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Ida

EKA library 

illustrated children’s book presentation and readings by Kush Badwahr, Augustas Lapinskas and Karen Isabel Talitee

Ida (meaning ‘east’ in Estonian but also referring to the ancient Germanic root ‘id’ meaning ‘labor, work’) is an eight year old resident of Ida-Virumaa asking herself what she would like to do when she grows up. On her way home from school, she has various interactions – with a soon to retire army officer, a group of young boys, a bird, her visiting aunt and an ex-miner – that relate to their life and work in the region in which they live. The interactions Ida has and the illustrations that make up the book are based on interviews and research exploring the nature of work, unemployment and retirement and its connections to issues of shrinkage and de-growth in the area. Ida is both a metaphor of the contemporary state of the region and a children’s book that makes these topics accessible through an illustrated narrative form.

Underneath the layers

@ the EKA spiral staircase

panorama installation by Kelli Puusepp and Nabeel Imtiaz

As the stones burned in the beginning of the 20th century, the towns in the East of Estonia started to grow. As the terrain in the backdrop was being dug deep, people moved in – families with all their personal belongings. Children played in the parks and their familiarity brought households closer. Memories of good times were made – over on the sidewalks and alleys, behind and in between the walls of Kohtla-Järve homes. As the underground sphere expanded, the mines got deeper, consequently developing the life on the surface. Though the estates grew denser, their expansion was halted by the end of the century. It all fell back inwards, imploding into themselves, throwing the community into an uncertainty. What was left were the remnants of the spaces once inhabited.

The story traces the history of socio-spatial formations and disintegration of the society that once formed Kohtla-Järve. 

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Nothing Power: where absent matter matters

A-500

exhibition by Luca Liese Ritter and Julia Freudenberg 

In Ida-Virumaa, shrinkage refers to the complex consequences of going away, becoming less, fading into thin air. People move, things disappear, services close, concrete panels decay and houses are demolished. What remains in those places that were inhabited by heterogeneous matter is a void. But this emptiness is not empty in the sense of a nothingness, a nirvana; rather, it continues to be quasi-present, conceivably retaining many of its material aspects and thus its place in the fabric of socio-material relations that shape the experience of living in and coping with urban shrinkage. 

Our project explores the affective flows between what is gone and what remains, and seeks to highlight the complicated intertwining of cause and effect that residents and policymakers must navigate as they confront the challenges of population loss and subsequent over-provision of housing infrastructure. 

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…so we can keep on watching eesti laul in the future

A-400

house by Kristiina Puusepp and Paul Simon

In the future, Ida-Virumaa will see rapid transformation. The excavation of oil shale, one of the main social and economic pillars of the region, is not in keeping with the reality of the climate crisis. The concept of a ‘just transition’ demands a change-over satisfying both workers rights and environmental care. Originally being required by labor- and environmental activists, the term is meanwhile used by different governmental actors. In Ida-Virumaa, the EU supports the endeavor of a just transition with 340 Million Euros. While the funding will not directly finance housing, by striving for a future-oriented industry, it is the base structure for securing homes for local residents. Despite attempts for widespread participation of just transition, the transformation is mostly directed by demands and plans from external groups and higher institutions. By thematizing the ambiguous relationship between this ‘outside’ and the local population, the project raises the question how we should position ourselves in the process of transition.

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The Last Layer, the Next Layer? Signs for those who choose to stay 

B-205

video installation by Christian Hörner and Hannah Mühlbach

When exploring the abandoned flats of Kohtla-Järve, we came across an outstanding phenomenon of personal expression and appropriation of space: through its multiple colors, patterns and layerings, wallpaper became the collage-like visual theme of our experience as explorers of Ida-Virumaa shrinking cities’ interiors. Inspired by the creativity and self-expression of those who have left the area, our search for shrinkage re-centered around the idea of creating something for those who still live in the cities that de-grow. We began to play with the idea of decorating facades of abandoned buildings with wallpaper in a graffitti-like manner, as a vehicle of intention, resistance and visibility. This next layer on Ida-Virumaa loses the fatality of linear decline until disappearance and points to an alternative future where abandoned buildings become monuments of persistence rather than unwanted obstacles for liveability. Our installation represents the hypothesis that people, when provided with the means to care for their cities, can re-frame narratives of shrinkage and create an optimistic outlook on Ida-Virumaa’s future.

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The Other side of the Coin: Must Shrinkage be Only Tormenting?

A-200

mixed media by Loviise Talvaru and Khedeeja Farrukh

Emptiness becomes even more emptier because of our need to define society through community. Kiviõli, one of the many mining towns in Ida-Virumaa, is categorized as an example of urban shrinkage, where dilapidated conditions of facades, rustic reminders of laundry lines, empty apartment buildings, sounds of sea gull penetrating the otherwise silent urbanity urges an outsider to call this environment tormenting. But is that really so?

Must shrinkage be only tormenting? Why is shrinkage antagonistic to growth? Isn’t growth also tormenting? Through this project, a process of personal experiences, of how we perceived shrinkage and how our experience changed it, is depicted. There came a point in our research where we realized that this top-down trajectory of perceptions is quite acute and that urbanity is not an abstraction only to be lived on papers, rather it is an everyday experience. So, we went back to Kiviõli. For good. And for surprises. 

Our approach is not an end-point, but a device of researching, where our visits to Kiviõli enabled an important aspect of experimentation and co-creation, transforming our approach towards shrinkage.

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Help yourself with Energy

B-205

video and installation by Nora Soo and Jannik Kastrup 

The electricity meter operates between the public and the private realm. Subject to regular control, it softly breaks their boundaries. In economically deprived regions like Ida-Virumaa its reading frequently decides the fate of the inhabitants, pressuring those who are financially incapable to upgrade to more efficient devices.
Tampering with the electricity meter is therefore a common disruptive practice.
However in the spheres of en vogue online life coaching, energy is portrayed as a personal property that can be manipulated according to spiritual practices, detached from economic and political circumstances. Does it mean that anyone can achieve anything being only restricted by imaginary boundaries? Paradoxically, the imaginaries of inhabitants in Ida-Virumaa are limited in a situation of energy poverty. Within this dichotomy of energy as a contested public good and as an individualized spirituality lies one of the challenges of neoliberal capitalist societies. The (video) installation plays with diverging concepts of energy by audiovisually overlapping and rearranging these distinct narratives.  

The exhibition “Open Windows” will reopen on the windows of the Library of EKA on February 21, at 4 pm.

Through the exhibition of EKA windows, different specialities of EKA introduce their most outstanding projects and the latest creations of students. The exhibition can be viewed on the windows of the EKA Library on Põhja pst and Kotzebue streets and will remain open until March 14.

Specialities represented: Installation and Sculpture, Room Design, Product and Environmental design, Visual Communication, Photography, Jewellery and Blacksmithing, Scenography, Fashion Design, Textile Design, Accessory Design, Graphics, Graphic Design, Animation, Ceramics, Industrial and Digital Product Design, Glass, Architecture, Interior Design, Painting, Art and Visual Culture, Cultural Heritage and Conservation

The exhibition of open windows of EKA made its debut in 2021 and received a warm welcome from those interested in art and art education. The Estonian Academy of Arts, located on the edge of Kalamaja, will once again enliven the city’s cultural landscape at street level. Get with it! 

TO THE EXHIBITION! The students of the 2nd year of the bachelor’s study in interior architecture focussed on creating inclusive exhibition spaces, tutored by architect Johanna Jõekalda. The task of the students was to design an exhibition space based on what they had learned, which would take into account visitors with different special needs to the maximum. 

During the course, students learned to understand the principles of user-oriented design and create an inclusive environment. Spatial solutions were designed with the Estonian National Museum’s exhibition “Kaasav ELU” (“Inclusive LIFE”) in mind, which brings together different gadgets and tools that support the learning and leisure activities of users with disabilities.

In developing their spatial proposals, students used VR technologies to better understand and explain different unique user experiences: VR, allowing for immersive experiences, is an excellent tool for helping to better understand different spatial experiences and designing more inclusive environments. Students’ work was based on the principle that a room that is comfortable for people with special needs is also convenient for all other users.

During the development of the projects, the students received support from the parallel course “Digital Techniques” held at the VR Lab and supervised by Johanna Jõekalda. Daniel Kotsjuba (accessibility), Kärt Ojavee (materiality), Artur Staškevitš (exhibition solutions) and Paco Ulman (digital techniques) shared their experiences of inclusive design. The studio was conducted in cooperation with the Tallinn University “Inclusive LIFE” project, led by Tiia Artla and Jana Kadastik.

See a virtual tour of the works of five interior design students.

From early November, a selection of student works completed during the course (Laura Maria Tõru, Kätlin Lond, Triin Kampus, Anni Kõrvemaa, Viktoria Ugur) is available for everyone to see at the exhibition “Inclusive LIFE” at the Estonian National Museum in Tartu. The student work is presented on a touch screen as a virtual tour, which guides the visitors of the exhibition through more exciting space solutions and shares information on the application of the principles of inclusive design in interior architecture.

The Department of Interior Architecture of EKA would like to thank all those who contributed to the supervision of students and for the exciting opportunity to cooperate with Tallinn University and the Estonian National Museum – together we took a small step towards making the environments and premises of the future friendly to all users.

The exhibition will be open until January 31, 2022, so onwards to Tartu!