Category: Faculty of Architecture

Urban Studies, resesarch studio presentation.

While few outside Berlin know where Schöneweide is, new developments led by the likes of Bryan Adams and Olafur Eliasson position the neighbourhood as a silent frontier of gentrification dynamics in the city. This research studio explores ongoing transformation of this former industrial area, once the base of the famous AEG electrical company. Contra the commonplace reading of gentrification through the lens of ‘hipster’ culture, the studio underlines the roles of state, finance and real estate as drivers of neighbourhood change and displacement. Investigating dynamics of gentrification at the urban edge, the case of Schöneweide serves as an entry point into a wider debate on how diverse groups are vested in reclaiming cities and its intersection with the official political structures – it necessitates rethinking the role of city planners as mediators between the public and private interests.

Open Lecture about closed systems by Lydia Kallipoliti

The next lecturer of the Open Lecture Series this autumn will be New York based Greek architect Lydia Kallipoliti – she investigates the architecture of closed worlds and asks, what is the power of shit. Kallipoliti will be stepping on the stage of the main auditorium of the new EKA building on the 19th of december at 6 pm.

Lydia Kallipoliti is an architect, engineer and scholar whose research focuses on the intersections of architecture, technology and environmental politics. She is an Assistant Professor at the Cooper Union in New York. She has also taught at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she directed the Master of Science Program, at Syracuse University, Columbia University [GSAPP] and Pratt Institute.

Her work has been published and exhibited widely including the Venice Biennial, the Istanbul Design Biennial, the Shenzhen Biennial, the Onassis Cultural Center, the Royal Academy of British Architects and the Storefront for Art and Architecture. She is the author of the awarded book The Architecture of Closed Worlds, Or, What is the Power of Shit (Lars Muller Publishers, 2018), the History of Ecological Design for Oxford English Encyclopedia of Environmental Science and the editor of EcoRedux, a special issue of Architectural Design magazine (AD, 2010). Kallipoliti holds a Diploma in Architecture and Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, a Master of Science [SMArchS] in design and building technology from MIT and a PhD in history and theory of architecture from Princeton University. She is the principal of ANAcycle thinktank, which has been named leading innovator in sustainable design in Build’s 2019 awards.

In her lecture, Kallipoliti will explore a genealogy of contained microcosms with the ambition to replicate the earth in its totality; a series of living experiments that forge a synthetic naturalism, where the laws of nature and metabolism are displaced from the domain of wilderness to the domain of cities and buildings. Beyond technical concerns, closed worlds distill architectural concerns related to habitation: first an integrated structure where humans, their physiology of ingestion and excretion, become combustion devices, tied to the system with umbilical cords; second, closed worlds are giant stomachs; they are inhabitable machines that digest resources and are sometimes disobedient; at times they digest, while at other times they vomit.

The Faculty of Architecture of the Estonian Academy of Arts has curated 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 everyone.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Johan Tali

www.avatudloengud.ee
www.facebook.com/EKAarhitektuur/

More info:
E-mail: arhitektuur@artun.ee
Tel. +372 642 0071

A lake and a port. Summer housing and mass housing. Metal, steel, automobiles, and the not-so distant memories of phosphorus mining. Beyond the towers of Vanalinn and the limestone of Lasnamäe exists this municipal assemblage that over 15,000 people call home.

Beyond Borders: Moving through Maardu is a public output & final grading of Estonian Academy of Arts Urban Studies Urbanisation studio “Tallinn–Maardu: expedition into the edge”, tutored by Andra Aaloe & Keiti Kljavin.

Whether or not you are familiar with Maardu, this festival of a kind will urge you to experience the area through various site-specific interventions exploring its physical and conceptual boundaries, the global and local activities that shape it, and the area’s relationship to neighbouring localities.

There will be a private bus service to transport guests to each event according to the programme below. To register for the tour bus that will travel to each exhibition of the festival, please email Lisa Rohrer at lisa.rohrer@artun.ee. You are also welcome to visit individual exhibits via your own transportation at the times displayed in the program schedule below. Please note that the private bus will not return to Tallinn, but public transportation runs between Maardu and Tallinn for our return trip.

Please dress warmly for outdoor weather and bring along snacks and refreshments! For more information check FB EVENT!

PROGRAMME SCHEDULE ON 14 DECEMBER 2019:

9:00–9:25 Urban artist in an urban field

(Last chance to use the loo) – Jesse Keddie

Photo Installation at Põhja pst 7 (Estonian Academy of Arts)

Stanely Kubrick said on the art of filmmaking “You may not have to know very much about anything else, but you must know about photography”. So what do I know? I know about filmmaking and I know about photography. On display at EKA will be the forgotten fields of Rootsi-Kallavere that embody how I express the world at large – it’s not what I’m doing in the space it’s what the space is doing through me.

9:30 Private bus service leaves from EKA, Tallinn

10.00–10:25 Occupying the void – Marina Pushkar

Walk and installation, starting point at Fosforiidi and Kroodi intersection.

The pedestrian tunnel connecting the Kroodi industrial park and the lake of Maardu facilitates the transition from the industrial realm to the prefigurative urban wilderness. Through a guided walk and installation, this project unveils the layers of human dominance in the process of occupying the space.

10:30–10:55 Stories from the other side – Alice Ashton

Expedition and participatory exercise at Vana-Narva maantee – Nurgatagune Puhvet, Vana Narva maantee

Vana-Narva maantee is a highway and an important geographical and infrastructural location for Maardu. It is also home to many diverse local activities and phenomena. Taking speculative fiction, installation, participatory art and postmodern and post-urban theory as a basis, Stories from the other side invites participants to consider how  narratives, signs and momentalisation are didactic processes that shape urbanisation and the different lenses that Vana-Narva maantee can be seen through. 

11:00–11:25 The last outpost – Ahmad Tahir

Walk-exercise, starting point at Madikse tee

The process of urbanisation reshapes the concept of the ‘hinterland’ as a warehouse that serves the capital. This curated walk in the backyards of the Kärmu industrial zone explores the role of the post-industrial town of Maardu in regional development, and the municipality’s future speculations in the neoliberal realm.

11:30–12:00 Walking along a life vein – Sarah Gerdiken 

Guided walk

Walking the solid but disused line of railroad, the landscape surrounding us is united by different scales of human use joining together the travelers of its past, present and expected scenarios of the future. Wear your gloves and proper shoes!

12:05–12:30 AED – Annika Ülejõe

Installation at Kitsekakra 17, Muuga aedlinn

AED looks at the process of suburbanisation changing the dynamics of the once solely summerhouse area on the basis of a family archive. By revealing layers of history, the on-site intervention highlights both physical alteration of the area and the change in its social fabric.  

12:35–13:00 Muuga muutub (Muuga Changes) – Deniz Taşkın 

Interactive platform, Muuga aedlinn

For last decades Muuga aedlinn has been experiencing a profound change in its urban fabric and daily practices. An interactive platform is created for locals and visitors alike to archive the change in process, inviting old and new locals to spot the alteration of Muuga in order to be able to cope with it.

13:10–13:35 Muuga harbour: The Once Only Unicorn – Egemen Mercanlioglu

Performance-lecture on the roundabout of Laasti tee and Veose street

On an ambiguous roundabout that overlooks the Muuga Harbour, a (non)speculative story of the likely future development of the biggest cargo harbour in Estonia will be put across. Zooming out to grasp the patterns of globalisation-driven urbanisation process of Muuga and Estonia, the narration covers topics from the Rail Baltic to the digitalization. Travelling from Muuga to China and back to Muuga again, this story will help visitors to track the traces of urbanisation.

13:40–14:05 A lonesome hill – Oleksandr Nenenko

Performance/exhibition at Ringi 54D, Maardu

Courtyards of mass housing areas as enclosed places for meeting and daily practices accompany the processes around urban, from severe housing crisis to land use value. This project looks at the visible and non-visible changes of one courtyard in Kallavere by trying to answer a seemingly simple question: “why is the hill so lonely?”. 

14:10–14:35 Walk around the image – Zahaan Khan

Guided walk, starting point at Ringi 54D, Maardu 

In a heavily visual culture, images can act as representative symbols for a city. Through an investigative walk, this performance will look closer at the orthodox church of Archangel Michael in Maardu to understand how it became to be the centerpiece of the new image created for the city’s socio-cultural life in the past decade.

14:45–15:10 In memory of the City – Lisa Rohrer

Ceremonial performance, at Keemikute street (near the Maardu kalmistu bus stop)

The Maardu Cemetery functions as a hybrid space – it is a site for life and for death, for grief and for celebration of a memory, for spirituality and for pragmatism, for expressing emotion and for economic exchange. In light of postmodern scholarship from the late 20th century, this exhibition will consider the death of “the city” and witness the emergence of “the urban” at its passing.

15:15–15:40 New archives as karaoke – Wimke Dekker

Screening at Fortuna bar, Stardi 2, Maardu

A spiderweb of scales and structures, houses and containers, roads and electricity networks. The frames are given, but the people who are living in Maardu are what creates a process, a movement, a development. Combining new archives from the internet with fragments that show details of daily life, this film, shown at a local bar Fortuna, creates a new archive of the present.

The Faculty of Architecture of EKA is glad to ask you to join an open lecture by Malene Freudendal-Pedersen – a professor in urban planning at Aalborg University. In her lecture “Cities, Mobilities, Futures” she talks about planning the city keeping cycling in mind. Freudendal-Pedersen will be stepping on the stage of the main auditorium of the new EKA building on the 20th of November at 10 am. Lecture is free of charge and open to everyone.

Malene Freudendal-Pedersen is Professor in Urban Planning at Aalborg University and has a interdisciplinary background linking sociology, geography, urban planning and the sociology of technology.

Focus for her research is how mobilities frame and enable modern everyday life. How individuals experience, evaluate or describe their mobilities and what propels their actions is important to understand if we aim at more sustainable mobilities in the future. Specific transport modes have different values and importance in planning cities. Values or taken for granted knowledge about transport and mobilities produce path dependencies in everyday life mobilities that are also diffused into policy and planning systems. Her research addresses interrelations between social practice and transport modes and the role the for urban spaces and city life.

More info:
E-post: arhitektuur@artun.ee
Tel. +372 642 0071

The Inevitability of Urbanization: Open Lecture by Ross Exo Adams

The next lecturer of the Open Lecture Series this autumn will be London based architect, urbanist and historian Ross Exo Adams, who will talk about the inevitability of urbanization. Adams will be stepping on the stage of the main auditorium of the new EKA building on the 28th of November at 6 pm.

Ross Exo Adams is Assistant Professor and Co-Director of Architecture at Bard College. He is the author of Circulation and Urbanization (Sage, 2019) and has written widely on the intersections of architecture and urbanism with geographies and histories of power. His research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Royal Institute of British Architects, The London Consortium, Iowa State University and The MacDowell Colony.

To speak about an urbanized planet today is at once to utter an unthinkable reality and to name the inevitability of a process we take to be rooted in the human condition itself. As we confront this situation today, we are met with questions of how we urbanize—sustainable urbanism, resilient urbanism, adaptation regimes, development as improvement, etc.—almost never asking why we must urbanize in the first place. In his talk, Adams argues that the inevitability of urbanization is based in part on the way in which we have historically overlooked the emergence of the urban itself, treating it instead as a natural outcome of human co-existence. By suggesting a genealogical account of the formation of this space-process in parallel to the rise of the modern state, its colonial outposts and the capitalist order it gave rise to, he attempts to open a space in which we might challenge the inevitability of an urban future. Now more than ever, as we confront endgame thresholds and the countless injustices of limitless growth, we need to find ways to ask: if not the urban, then what?

The Faculty of Architecture of the Estonian Academy of Arts has curated 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 everyone.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Johan Tali

www.avatudloengud.ee
www.facebook.com/EKAarhitektuur/

More info:
Kadi Karine
E-mail: arhitektuur@artun.ee
Tel. +372 642 0071

Aesthetics, spatial practices and the 1980s neoliberalization: Open Lecture by Helena Mattsson

The first lecturer of the Open Lecture Series this autumn will be Helena Mattsson, Professor in History and Theory at KTH School of Architecture. In her lecture The Politics of the Archive: Aesthetics, spatial practices and the 1980s neoliberalization, she sets the historical foundation for our neoliberal and capitalist cityscape. Mattsson will be stepping on the stage of the main auditorium of the new EKA building on the 7th of November at 6 pm.

Helena Mattsson is Professor in History and Theory of Architecture at KTH School of Architecture. She is the co-editor of Swedish Modernism: Architecture, Consumption, and the Welfare State and the forthcoming Neoliberalism on the Ground: Architecture and transformation from the 1960s to the present. She is a member of the editorial board of Journal of Architecture. Her research deals with the 20th century theory on welfare state architecture and contemporary architectural history with a special focus on the interdependency between politics, economy and spatial organizations. Another focus for the research is methods of historiography, and investigations into participatory history writing.

Today’s social and political landscape of the welfare state is in a period of radical transformation, a process often labeled as neoliberalization. The role architecture and spatial practices play in this landscape have radically changed, with the separation between spatial dimensions and the administrative state apparatus. This shift calls for new conceptualizations of architecture as a discipline and how it operates. Her lecture discusses the contemporary architectural history of neoliberalization and revisits the archives of the emerging constellations of spatial practices and politics in the 1980s.

The Faculty of Architecture of the Estonian Academy of Arts has curated 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 everyone.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Johan Tali

www.avatudloengud.ee 
www.facebook.com/EKAarhitektuur/ 

Claudia Pasquero, PhD student of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Curriculum of Architecture and Urban Planning will defend her thesis “Polycephalum: Aesthetic as a measure of ecological intelligence in Architecture and Urban Design” (“Polycephalum: esteetika ja ökoloogiline intelligentsus arhitektuuris ja linnakujunduses”) on the 22nd of November 2019 at 10.00 at Exhibition Space of BAU Design College of Barcelona (Carrer de Pujades, 118 Barcelona)

Supervisors: dr Veronika Valk (Estonian Academy of Arts) and prof Mario Carpo (The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London)

Pre-reviewers: Prof Dr Christopher Pierce (Architectural Association, London) and Prof Dr Bart Lootsma (University of Innsbruck)

Opponent: prof dr Dr Christopher Pierce (Architectural Association, London)

This dissertation, titled ‘Polycephalum: the aesthetic as a measure of ecological intelligence in architecture and urban design’, unpacks and articulates the design methodology of the candidate’s practice-based research. It moves from an analysis of the relationship between ecoLogicStudio (co-founded by the candidate in 2005) and the academic work she conducts at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) and at Innsbruck University (UIBK). The thesis then explores how, in this body of work, biology intersects computation as the basis for a new architectural and urban design method. Critical to the synergy among these disciplines is the role of aesthetics. The candidate refers to aesthetics as a language of non-verbal communication, a metalanguage, which, she argues, must now embody greater ecological agency in shaping future cities.

Methodologically, the development of this thesis has followed the Creative Practice Research model developed by RMIT University (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology), founded on the notion that any creative venturous practice intrinsically involves a form of research enquiry. In supporting the development of this original piece of work the Estonian Academy of Arts doctoral program in architecture and urban planning, in which the candidate enrolled as an ADAPT-r Research Fellow, has aligned its stream of creative practice research with RMIT’s long-established program.

A key outcome of this research is embodied in the concept of Polycephalum architecture. This notion mobilizes multiple forms of intelligence, both human and non-human, to redefine the urban realm in the post-Anthropocene age. What role will non-human intelligence, both artificial and biological, play in shaping future architecture? The Polycephalum dismisses the core notion of modern master-planning, to elevate humanity beyond its material substrate via its foundations in rationality. Its aesthetics apparatus becomes here a mean to establish cybernetic conversations, within which human and non-human ecologies constitute co-evolutionary systems, a form of extended mind.

The thesis was developed as part of the ADAPT-r (Architecture, Design and Art Practice Training-research) program within Architecture and Urban Planning program of EKA Doctoral School.

Please find the PhD thesis HERE

Open Lecture by:
Rolf Hughes, Professor of Artistic Research, Estonian Academy of the Arts/Experimental Architecture Group, Newcastle University

&

Rachel Armstrong, Professor of Experimental Architecture, Experimental Architecture Group, Newcastle University

This lecture describes the framework and strategies for engaging an age of uncertainty through artistic and design-led research. The presentation will ask how we will be inhabiting and making spaces at times of radical change. Hughes and Armstrong will provide examples from architectural research, address the value of creating transdisciplinary networks, the role of the architectural thinker within such networks, and the need to protect the artistic integrity of goal-based research projects.

Rolf Hughes has been at the forefront of developments in artistic research in Scandinavia and Northern Europe from its inception. He is currently Director of Artistic Research for the Experimental Architecture Group at Newcastle University (UK), Visiting Professor for the Estonian Academy of the Arts and the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme. He has supervised and examined PhD dissertations across architecture, art, craft, design, photography and the performing arts since 2000, including for the Bartlett, University of Westminster, Middlesex University, KU Leuven, Royal Institute of Technology, Oslo School of Architecture, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm University of the Arts, and elsewhere. He has published widely, and is in demand internationally as an expert on artistic research.

Rachel Armstrong is Professor of Experimental Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University (UK). Her work explores how our buildings can incorporate some of the properties of living systems to become ‘living architectures’. She was coordinator for the FET Open Living Architecture project (April 2016-June 2019) and coordinates the EU Innovation Fund ALICE project. She is a Rising Waters II Fellow with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (April-May 2016) and a 2010 Senior TED Fellow. She is also a Member of the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment at Newcastle University and Director and founder of the Experimental Architecture Group (EAG) whose work has been published and exhibited internationally.

From October 23 – 26, 2019, Estonian Academy of Arts will be hosting Nordic-Baltic Academy of Architecture meeting. Welcome!

Programme
Registration

List of participants

Taxi from the airport: 10 – 15 EUR. Tram No 4 connects from the airport to the hotel, station “Hobujaama”. Ticket purchased from the driver costs 2 EUR. Passenger port is within a walking distance from the hotel.

Organising committee:
Andres Ojari
Ole Gustavsen
Ugis Bratuskins
Pille Epner
Jüri Soolep
Sandra Mell

Open lecture „becoming [in]determinate: from specificity to responsiveness, from site to situation” by JAMES CAREY, artist and lecturer in Interior Design, School of Architecture and Urban Design, RMIT University on Monday, 9 September 4 pm (A300). 

James Carey’s creative research practice explores process-based interventions within decommissioned buildings and gallery spaces. This presentation will discuss James’ practice and how it shifted during his PhD candidature; from one that was defined by himself and others as site-specific and spatial practice, to one that explores and manifests the concept of duration through a practice that is temporal, material and spatial. Furthermore, James will also discuss his ongoing creative research practice, particularly in the cities of Detroit and Hamtramck, USA and his project as part of the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2019.

Biography:

James Carey is an artist and a Lecturer in Interior Design, School of Architecture and Urban Design, RMIT University. James is also an artistic director at BLINDSIDE gallery, and he lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. 

James has an inherent curiosity to notions of process, time and duration. His practice is one of mark making, marking time, making time, and time making; foregrounding duration and marking an occurrence. His technique is one of working responsively, allowing particular temporal conditions to surface within specific situations. His marks materialise immateriality and allow the residue of particular processes to be assembled as collections of materialised and spatialised time. 

Recent projects and exhibitions include interruptions Stockroom Gallery, Kyneton 2018, future interior with staff and PhD candidates Interior Design, School of Architecture & Urban Design, RMIT as part of Melbourne Design Week 2019, and ! 金! curated by Dr Kent Wilson and La Trobe Art Institute, as part of the Castlemaine State Festival, Australia 2019. In June and July 2019, James returned to Detroit, USA for continuing research, and he will also participate in the Oslo Architecture Triennale, whose provocation explores the concept of degrowth within contemporary cities and cultures.