Category: Faculty of Architecture

On September 6, 2022, the Estonian Academy of Arts will organize a conference analyzing the vast scope of possibilities for innovation in the era of digital reality, looking more specifically into the fields of architecture, spatial design, creativity, innovation, and design education in relation to the possibilities offered by the means of digital reality.

PROGRAM

There is no fee for the conference, but you are kindly asked to sign up in advance.

The previous conference of the Estonian Academy of Arts Faculty of Architecture dissecting digital reality took place in 2019. In the years since, the world around us has changed – many say, irreversibly.

The pandemic hit the global economy and culture with unprecedented force, forcing all to restructure our lives, businesses and leisure habits. The global wave of lockdowns catalyzed e-commerce, distance learning and work-from-home, as well as all digital platforms. Innovations in digital reality have gained momentum and have now become a source of completely new possibilities.

The concept of innovation radiates throughout the economy and culture today. It has been argued that for innovation to be radical, it must be design-based. We can trace logical steps from creativity and invention to design and innovation in our lives. It can be assumed that the design thinking that was highly promoted in recent decades was a bit premature. Only now, with the emergence of digital reality, has it become fully meaningful – through digital platforms, most human labor is being pre-designed.

At the conference, we will speculate on the future of space, architecture, creation, innovation and design education in the age of digital reality. Dr. Roberto Verganti will dissect innovation as the keynote speaker at the conference with his lecture titled “Design-Driven Innovation and Radical Invention of Arts”. Speakers include Emil Adamec (Brno University of Technology, Charles University), Gao Xu (Taiyuan University of Technology), Cheng Lu(Cardiff University), Max Eschenbach and Prof. Dr. Oliver Tessmann(Darmstadt University of Technology), Prof. Roemer van Toorn (UMA School of Architecture), Dr. Siim Tuksam (Estonian Academy of Arts) and Martin Melioranski (Estonian Academy of Arts). The sessions are moderated by Professor Toomas Tammis and Professor Dr. Andres Kurg. The panel discussion will be moderated by Dr. Jüri Soolep.

The conference takes place within the TAB Tallinn Architecture Biennale, always aimed at looking boldly into the future.

More about the conference.

The conference is supported by the Estonian Academy of Arts, the Estonian Association of Architects, the Estonian Cultural Endowment, the Estonian Ministry of Culture, and the European Regional Development Fund.

Estonian Association of Architects together with Estonian Academy of Arts and SAP Katowice are pleased to invite for an exhibition about the cycle of lectures Masters of Architecture

The opening will take place 18.08.2022  thursday|
18:00 (EEST) I Estonian Academy of Arts | Põhja pst 7
110412 Tallinn | Estonia|

The exhibition opening on the 18th of August will be followed by a polish-estonian panel discussion about the conditions of designing in both countries. Guests invited to participate are Andro Mand, At Ader, Katrin Koov, Matgorzata Pilinkiewicz and Tomas Studniarek.
The discussion will be moderated by Justyna Boduch and Wojciech Fudala.

Masters of Architecture is a series of architecture lectures organized by the Association of Polish Architects in Katowice (SARP Katowice). This special exhibition is created to sum up the historv of all the events.
The series was originated in 2004 and supposed to be a cycle of 5 lectures onlv, given by architects representing 5 biggest European capitals. The speeches about London, Berlin, Paris, Vienna and Amsterdam received extremelv wide interest from local architects and architecture students. As a result, the only decision possible was to go on with organization.
The Masters of Architecture series is organized up to now and influenced the education of hundreds of architecture students who received an access to much extensive knowledge than their predecessors from post-communist era. Between 2004 and 2020, the citv of Katowice hosted 70 architects from all over the world, including winners of the most significant architecture prizes.
A moving installation consists of 70 circles, corresponding to 70 architects who visited the city of Katowice and shared their knowledge with Polish audience. All the elements of the exhibition are mobile, what encourages visitors to interact. Besides the circles with the Masters of Architecture names, the installation contains some bigger circles with architect’s portraits, together with their opinions about the city of Katowice.
An extra gesture are mirrors, located at some of the circles. When young architects are visiting the exhibition, the can see their own reflection there. Who knows, maybe
in the future the will become Masters of Architecture as well?

The event is under the Honorary Patronage of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage prof. Piotr Glinski, the Ambassador of Poland to Estonia Gregorz Koztowski and the Mavor of Katowice Marcin Krupa.

EAL website

OPENING: On July 29 at 5 p.m., students of architecture and urban planning will open this year’s wooden shelter KINO on the embankment of River Emajõgi in Tartu. You are all kindly invited to the opening.

The shelter / installation KINO is an school project created by EKA 1st-year architecture and urban planning students and completed during the summer construction study sessions. Designing and building a shelter has been the first major project of EKA architecture students for many years – this is the 17th shelter, to ve precise. Last winter, one proposal was selected from among the ideas developed for specially for Tartu city, which will now be built by the whole team of students. The KINO, consisting of three parts, will remain to enjoy for the citizens of the city until the end of Tartu’s cultural capital year, and the shelters for the next few years will also be planned and built in Tartu and for Tartu.

KINO is being produced with the support of the city of Tartu, the Estonian Cultural Foundation, the Estonian Forestry and Wood Industry Union, the Environmental Investment Center, Raitwood, Palmako and EKA.

Students and tutors:

EKA architecture and urban planning 1st year students’ design team: Alis Mäesalu, Tuule Kangur, Darja Gužovskaja, Madis Arp Keerd.

Construction team: Aiko Liisa Olek, Anabel Ainso, Anu Alver, Anneli Virts, Arabella Aabrams, Frank Kuresaar, Fred-Eric Pavel, Hugo Georg Kalaus, Karl Robin Timm, Karmo Viherpuu, Kristian Tigane, Laura Haki, Laura Venelaine, Liisalota Kroon, Rasmus Roosileht, Triinu Lamp.

The project was supervised by Ott Alver and Alvin Järving from architecture office Arhitekt Must, Ragnar Kekkonen guided the students in the carpentry workshop, and Andres Lehtla directed the constructions.

We will be happy to meet you all on the banks of Emajõgi – next to the Atlantis building in Ülejõe Park.

10:00-10:10 Introductions

10:10-11:10 (EEST)

Luisa Fernanda Ayla Torres

Precariousness in the Transformation of Labour: Through Working Class Identity in the city of Turin

Between the 1960s and 1980s, nine million Italians migrated from the agricultural regions of Italy to the productive areas of Turin, shaping the periphery of the city from a rural to an industrial area. The Post-War economic boom provided jobs in the northern plants, giving life to a workers’ hegemony and demographic, social, and cultural transformation. This socioeconomic transformation that affected the organisation of workers, labour, political activity, and society in general, was manifested in two cases. The Palace of Labour, an avant-garde building intended to celebrate the struggles of the working class with an exhibition focused on “man and his progress”, and the case of Mirafiori Sud, a working class neighbourhood symbolising the association of workers. In this way, this thesis explores the identity of the working class in the contemporary city of Turin, where security in neoliberal times no longer needs the scope of the protective techniques of the liberal social State, and as a consequence precarization is now the norm. This is reflected in the transformation of labour manifesting itsel through productive connection with others, where labour is not purely characterised by the increasing capitalization of social life but is effectively reflected with others, producing new social relations.

Examined by Alberto Vanolo (University of Turin) and Aro Velmet (University of Southern California)

11.15-12:15 (EEST)

Mira Samonig

the matter of right-wing populism in Polish LGBT-free zones; towards a with-standing xenourbanism?

Almost a third of Poland had been declared an ‘LGBT-free zone’ in 2020, stigmatizing the LGBTIQP+ community as a threat to Polish identity; this labeling remains a reality for many Polish towns. In this thesis, I am turning towards the concept of the ‘LGBT-free zones’ as a case to investigate the material reality of right-wing populism. I seek to develop a third position to a historical or new materialist understanding in order to investigate such material reality. By that, the ways values find physical expression and thus possibly mobilize oppressive attitudes into ever new futures ahead are traced. It becomes quite evident that the way structures of oppression are advanced and maintained within the public realm exists quite dominantly in everyday narratives. In a bottom-up manner, right-wing populism is advanced on the street; yet, it is by far not perceived by everyone. This marks the entry point for sketching out a possible approach to how the discipline of urbanism could position itself in social struggles. Drawing on Helen Hester’s Xenofeminism, the thesis introduces the concept of xenourbanism describing urbanism based on the conceptual notion of solidarity without sameness. I argue that the notion of xeno- as a prefix attached to urbanism focuses on an inherent transformational potential within the current, rendering a perceived unarming reality into a weapon of contestation and by that suggesting trajectories away from paralyzing no-alternative narratives.

Examined by Piotr Plucienniczak (Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts) and Helen Runting (Secretary)

12:25-13:35 (EEST)

Zahaan Khan

Tourism-Led Gentrification: The Case of Dal Lake in Kashmir

The dissertation explores tourism-led gentrification, its causes and the impact on the communities living in and around the ecologically-sensitive region of Dal Lake in Kashmir. The dissertation employs methodological triangulation using interviews, survey and policy document analysis, as methods. The policy document in question is the Srinagar Master Plan 2035 issued by the Srinagar Development Authority. Analysing the correlation between tourism and gentrification in a conflict-torn region and using displacement as a conceptual lens, the thesis maps the socio-cultural and economic aspects of touristification especially in relation to the everyday lives of the communities. The dissertation employs a two-pronged analytical approach by using two categories – land milieu and water milieu – to foreground the patterns and impact of gentrification in and around the lake. The analysis of the land milieu concerns itself with a detailed exploration into Boulevard, the long promenade along the lake’s periphery. It further discusses holiday rentals and issues of mobility and maps the city’s land-use patterns particularly in relation to expansion along the lake’s periphery. The study of the water milieu, on the other hand, is an exploration into the historical houseboats of Kashmir and the local hanji (or haenz) community; foregrounding the issues concerning policies of renovation and relocation of

houseboats. The dissertation also delves into the government’s land use and tourism-driven development plans around the lake, especially post abrogation of

Article 370 of the Indian constitution that gave ‘special status’ to the region.

Examined by Dr Mathew Varghese (Mahatma Gandhi University) and Karlis Ratnieks (EKA)

13:35-14:25 Lunch

14:25-15:25 (EEST)

Egemen Mercanlioglu

THE WORK OF A RIFT: Kanal İstanbul and Turkey’s Authoritarian Neoliberalism

Turkey under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi was touted as a paragon of neoliberalism and a burgeoning democracy until the late-2000s. Two decades later, the positive portrayals of the country have decidedly shifted. Turkey is now considered to have retreated from neoliberalism; an emblematic case of authoritarian turn. However, this thesis rethinks authoritarian governance as the kernel of the Erdoğan-led AKP’s brand of neoliberalism. It does so by focusing on a to-be-built urban megaproject, Kanal İstanbul—a 45-kilometer long man-made waterway, aiming to locate İstanbul as a signature node in the global web of flooding money and commodities. Using the megaproject as a lens, the thesis shows how neoliberal reforms in the early-2000s have propelled İstanbul and the construction sector as financial growth generating engines of the country. Subsequently, these

reforms have buttressed contemporary coercive governance structure and a megaproject spree in the city. Finally, the thesis briefly explores a recent but growing counter-hegemonic contestation against Erdoğan and his Kanal İstanbul, posed by the mayor of İstanbul. The thesis does not give a final verdict but explores whether or not this challenge proposes an alternative to authoritarian neoliberalism.

Examined by Dr Cemal Burak Tansel (Newcastle University) and Mattias Malk (EKA)

15:30-16:30 (EEST)

Deniz Taskin

Architecture as a Practice of Care: Case Studies of Women’s Care-Based Architecture Practices

Care as a concept is becoming more crucial in architecture and urban practice as a result of

the COVID-19 pandemic’s unpredictable spatial, social, and political circumstances. The

attitude of urbanized capitalism towards contemporary urban problems and its refusal to

acknowledge the urgency of the climate crisis result in uncaring urban practices. The

important position of architecture as a measure for assessing our place in the ecosystem and

the role of architects and related disciplines in determining with whom we live together

requires them to reconsider the values and priorities that drive their practice.

This thesis unpacks care as a concept and ethical practice through a feminist lens by

focusing on the notion of “configuration of care,” which refers to how architects express their

ethical and political objectives by arranging human and nonhuman materials to achieve

caring relationships in urban spaces. (Suchman 2012). It does so by focusing on the practices

of women from the field of architecture and related disciplines whose contemporary practice

foregrounds care and employs feminist care ethics: Careful Mapping by Spolka, Performing

Architherapy by Erika Henriksson, Mutfak (Kitchen) by Merve Bedir, The Blind Alley by

Elin Strand Ruin. The thesis explores certain commonalities and recurring patterns of thought

in how the practitioners’ encounter and apply feminist care ethics. Finally, it discusses the

potential and limits of incorporating feminist care ethics into architecture practice, as well as

the potential for architectural practice to become care practice.

Examined by Agata Marzecova (EKA) and Henriette Steiner (University of Copenhagen)

On Thursday, June 9, at 6 pm, we will open an exhibition of works by architecture students of the Estonian Academy of Arts in the Krull Quarter. In the evening, the first introduction of the Timber Architecture Research Center PAKK will take place.

The pop-up exhibition “REKrulli: reconstructing spacial culture” is an official side event of the New European Bauhaus Festival and it will remain open until June 12.

The REKrulli studio’s objective was to develop flexible architecture from sustainable materials, based on digital design and fabrication. We were looking at possible ways of living together beyond the usual apartment association home ownership model, while developing contemporary building structures that can produce adaptable and efficient solutions for the creation of high quality spaces with a positive environmental impact. 

REKrulli superstudio supports the ongoing research project “sLender” at EKA PAKK which examines what type of apartment building does Tallinn need today and how to solve a new apartment building using the best knowledge of the Estonian wooden house industry and architects.

SCHEDULE OF THE OPENING EVENT:

15.00 Presentations of the five best works of the Estonian Pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale *

17.30 Opening of the installation “Steampunk” *

Exhibition:

18.00 Introduction of the EKA Wooden Architecture Competence Center PAKK, researchers and guests speak.

18.30 Students of the Faculty of Architecture of EKA will present the visions of apartment buildings and the results of the REKrull superstudio.

THE EXHIBITION IS OPEN:

Thursday, June 9, 6 p.m. – Opening night

Friday, June 10, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Saturday, June 11, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Sunday, June 12, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Students:

Triinu Amboja, Mariia Babur, Grete Daut, Simon Eiland, Roosmarii Kukk, Helin Kuldkepp, Patrick Liik, Kristina Lillepea, Maria Helena Luiga, Mattias Ots, Mariia Paslova, Yelyzaveta Perel, Yelyzaveta Peresada, Daria Polonska, Anna Pushkarska, Mikael Ristmets, Martin Sepp, Sander Sinnep, Kaari Maria Tirmaste, Cristin Marii Titma, Aneth Traumann, Mariia Ufimtseva, Liispet Viira, Laura Liis Vilbiks, Dalia Viškelyt

Tutors:

Architectural planning: Siim Tuksam, Sille Pihlak

Structural analysis and energy design: Adam Orlinski (Bollinger+Grohmann)

Anthropological analysis: Mattias Malk

Landscape architecture: Karin Bachmann

* The opening of the exhibition will be preceded at 3 pm by the public presentations of the five best works of the Estonian Pavilion for the Venice Architecture Biennale and the opening of the installation “Steampunk” in the Krull Quarter. The event is organized by the Estonian Center of Architecture.

Preservation has achieved cultural significance as a lens through which various urban experts have come

to imagine what a socially and environmentally sound future might look like. As an approach, preservation has been applied to disparate phenomena ranging from historic neighbourhoods and natural environments to democracy and identity. This studio unfolded the formative concepts and historic moments that define contemporary understandings of preservation and applied these discussions to various typologies of architecture, urban fabric and the natural environment taking Pärnu and the wider region as a case study. In particular, the studio focused on the ways in which ideas, labour and design have intersected in the past to identify alternatives to the mainstream forms of preservation.

The studio culminates with a presentation of group projects that explore a variety of approaches to layers of heritage and questions of preservation in Pärnu and Sindi. Pärnu, the fourth largest city in Estonia, is struggling with the seemingly conflicting and contradictory notions of growth, shrinkage, preservation and destruction. Sindi, as a smaller town in the region, faces similar, but also additional challenges connected to its significant industrial heritage. Efforts to imagine and construct a vision for a city are also tied up with the tactile practices of preservation; set within specific administrative and management frameworks of maintenance, care, and neglect. 

Despite intentions, prescriptive visions by the city and developers can serve to exacerbate inequalities through the various infrastructures, supply chains, policies and environmental conditions that extend well beyond the rigid borders of a city.

Can the concept of preservation open a discussion around a vision for Pärnu (and its hinterlands)

beginning not with growth and progress, but rather with repair, maintenance or even deterioration?

Student projects explore who gets to decide what is valuable, organise the preservation of things, and who then carries out the work. Negotiations about what should be preserved and what “good preservation” entails, are always contingent and contextual.

Projects: 

• • Decompressed Transition: Paula Veidenbauma, Nora Soo and Jannik Kastrup
  • Tides of a Summer City: Khadeeja Farrukh, Anna Dzebliuk and Christian Hörner
  • Fabricated Heritage – Interweaving the Past and Future of Sindi’s Kalevivabrik: Luca Riese Ritter, Paulina Schroeder and Augustas Lapinskas
  • Tea, Coffee or Hot Water?: What to Make of the Boiler Room: Kush Badhwar, Nabeel Imtiaz and Paul Simon

Decompressed Transition

Paula Veidenbauma, Nora Soo and Jannik Kastrup

Pärnu is caught between diverging time regimes. In its role as a major spa and resort town, the city aims at slowing down the rhythm of life of the urban workforce. In parallel, the developments surrounding Rail Baltica will likely greatly compress this rhythm within Pärnu. The project examines frameworks of the relationship between those phenomena. It deals with instances of built and immaterial heritage and acts of preserving, especially the latter through shifting political systems. The float, emerging as the central piece of the project, can be interpreted as a gradient operating between Rail Baltica (a linear and high-velocity infrastructure), Pärnu’s leisure facilities and the open sea. It might function as a means of transportation while also exploring the possibility of non-arrival.

Visitors will be engaging with the project via a video installation, a float building workshop and a presentation. Float building instructions will be summarised in a booklet.

Tides of a Summer City

Khadeeja Farrukh, Anna Dzebliuk and Christian Hörner

The project explores possible resilient futures in Pärnu as a resort city. Showing how the “Summer City” developed historically, the video installation extrapolates empirical insights through Pärnu’s present-day reality into a future of constant flood emergency. The installation mobilizes futuristic renderings of possible resilient futures after a catastrophic flooding event to juxtapose and question the concepts of heritage, seasonality and resilience. We touch upon the inter-urban dependencies between Pärnu and Tallinn, manifesting historically, materially and spatially at the seaside of Estonia’s summer capital, securing the cities influx of holidaymakers during summer, but also causing issues of urban disenfranchisement of its residents, exploitation of its workers and destruction of coastal habitats of non-human residents. Looking into the future, it will no longer be possible to brush over the threat of flooding and the prospect of permanent crisis. The project “Tides of a Summer City” asks hypothetical questions, working towards a framework for understanding future challenges by following the changing historical tides of a summer city.

Fabricated Heritage – Interweaving the Past and Future of Sindi’s Kalevivabrik

Luca Riese Ritter, Paulina Schroeder and Augustas Lapinskas

The project explores the significance of Sindi´s industrial heritage. In recent decades, globalisation, deindustrialization, economic restructuring and industrial relocation have produced new landscapes within many European cities and towns – the post-industrial landscape. Deprived of their raison d’être, they are often regarded as spatially, socially, and semiotically empty places. In order to overcome this apparent ‘void’, the transformation of these post-industrial remnants into new uses is now an essential part of urban development practice.  

Turning to industrial landscapes as potential carriers of cultural heritage ostensibly provides a  framework for the continued management of these sites. Industrial heritage then becomes the bearer of local identity and creates uniqueness out of the former mundane. 

The town of Sindi, a place essentially born from the settlement of a textile factory in the early 19th century, is in the process of discussing the reintegration of the material remains of industrial production into the town’s fabric which, since the closure of Kalevivabrik, the textile factory, has outgrown its original purpose. In this process of readjusting the relationship between factory-gone-ruin and the reorientation of the city, our project seeks to understand the potentials and conflicts that arise from industrial heritage, while taking a critical perspective at the practices of heritage preservation and its political implications. How and by whom is the town’s history preserved and remembered? Can there be a value of the material remains in the process of their decay? What is the role of heritage as a legal imperative? What role can the factory building play in the future of Sindi? 

Tea, Coffee or Hot Water?: What to Make of the Boiler Room

Kush Badhwar, Nabeel Imtiaz and Paul Simon

Drawing on the interest in the role of the educational institution Academia Non-Grata, elephants and other far-out references, the project explores junctions between the plan, the script and performance; preservation, the boiler room in the wider fabric of Pärnu; and the pitfalls and possibilities of experimental approaches to planning.

Plans for places chart a set of intentions that seek to influence the future of a place. Could the duration in which a plan is enacted be considered a performance?

Conversely, the script may be considered the plan for a performance. But despite the presence of a script, in performance, there can be room to manoeuvre in and around what is on the page, to improvise, to confront uncertainty and the yet to be known, to discover and learn from the process. Could such an approach also be applied to planning a city?

What might be discovered about prospective futures, preservation and other possibilities in Pärnu through the act of performance? Can performance and planning ever effectively speak to one another?

The possibilities of these questions are explored through three intertwined narratives of the boiler room, also the site of performance/presentation of the work: one in which the boiler room remains, structurally, as it is today; another in which the boiler room retains its shell but is appropriated over time; and, lastly in which the boiler room is razed and the site changes in purpose. Speculative fiction and alternative history take us through the boiler room and into the possible futures of the boiler room and the city of Pärnu.

On May 5th at 6 pm, our Faculty of Architecture will be happy to present architect and historian researching the history of architecture and urban technologies, Professor Antoine Picon with an open lecture titled “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Design” at the EKA Main Hall.

Will artificial intelligence really impact design practice? If such is the case, what role would be left to humans in a more and more machine-driven context? The lecture will explore some of the possible scenarios linked to the rise of artificial intelligence. Central to these scenarios will be the question of the distribution of agency between humans and machines.

Antoine Picon is the G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology and Director of Research at the Harvard GSD and Director of Research at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris. Trained as an engineer, architect, and historian, Picon works on the history of architectural and urban technologies from the eighteenth century to the present. He has published extensively on this subject.

Open Lectures are open to all architecture and design students, professionals and general audience intrigued by spatial and design matters. The lecture is in English and free of charge.

The lecture is one of the subject pre-lectures of the Conference “Innovation and Digital Reality” which takes place 6th of September 2022 in EKA: https://www.artun.ee/…/conference-innovation-and…/

The lecture and conference are supported by Estonian Association of Architects, European Regional Development Fund and EKA.

Taking technoecologies of care in (hard or soft) urban infrastructure as a starting point, the Urban Ethnography course (tutors: Agata Marzecova and Hanna Husberg) uses ethnographic strategies to make perceptible interdisciplinary phenomena that cannot be described from a disciplinary perspective. During the course the participants are encouraged to develop collaborative research projects that explore boundary approaches to ethnography by critically employing creative and artistic research methods in the research process, as well as for conveying their research results.

Whereas ecology can be understood as a science of relatedness between things, beings and processes that make up urban nature or urban space, technoecologies allows an analysis of the entanglement of technologies and natures, and draws attention to how the materialisation of nature is always and already a mediated phenomenon. Subsequently, addressing care through its technoecologies allows for a prism through which human, non-human and technological elements are treated not as separate entities but as interrelated aspects of care, maintenance and repair.

The finals will start at 14:00 with four group presentations by students (abstracts below). This will be followed by a presentation starting at 17.30 by our external reviewer, Swedish-Brazilian artist, researcher, writer and Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University (Stockholm), Isabel Löfgren. Lögfgren often works in collaboration with artistic collectives and art institutions considering issues in visual, gender, social and environmental justice and her research interests include cultural politics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of migration and diaspora in the fields of contemporary art, media philosophy, and media activism.

Facebook event can be found HERE.

Pimp my bike

By Martina Maria Semenzato, Leonardo Improta , Paul Jochen Simon

As our project, we transformed the “simple” act of fixing a bicycle into an introspective investigation of the concept of care and its implications. Within a few weeks, we collaboratively tried to bring life into a neglected two-wheeler. In all repairing sessions we took time for self-reflection, retracing the steps, thoughts and actions performed. By this, we tried to dig out the underlying patterns that are connected to our doing. Analysing the process brought up several challenges and questions. Is fixing the bike an act of care that we do towards the object, or towards ourselves? How are gender roles manifested in our actions? Can you break something as an act of maintenance? Is it necessary to receive care in order to perform an act of care? Is the concept of care an act of pure altruism, completely unrelated to any kind of end or return? Are we doing this project merely out of selfishness aimed at completing an assigned task to get a grade? What does care mean for us? Finally, the reflections were transformed into a video installation that will be displayed this Friday.

(No) More Stretch Please – Manifesto for (In)Flexibility

By Paula Kristiāna Veidenbauma, Jannik Kastrup, Luca Liese Ritter

We have a problem. At the Estonian Academy of Arts, a room can become an exhibition hall, a hallway can be turned into a conference center, any of the concrete walls—into galleries, waiting for the next vernissage to start. The architecture of EKA’s new building bears unending potential imaginaries, designed as always hybrid, always adaptable, and ever-changing. But how much space is left for flexibility in the program designs? And how does it show in the program implementation? Does the immaterial system behind the space provide a flexible support mechanism for students when in need or is flexibility ultimately a false promise, disguising flaws within the university’s structure?

The project examines the relationship between the flexible-oh-so-flexible working environment and culture at the university and the systematic framework of program structures at the EKA Faculty of Architecture. Grounded in our own experience, observations and private stories of students, at times faced with the limits of the flexibility, The Manifesto for (In)Flexibility is both an attempt to gain visibility of the invisible sufferings at an institution deeply grounded within the landscape of neoliberal academia, as well as a manual on how to resist the institutional normalisation of overworking. Presented in a form of a performative reading, the project includes movement practices addressing space exploration, testing the limits of the flexibility of one’s body and those of the space, thinking, where would they meet.

the door stop

By Nora Soo, Kush Badhwar, Khadeeja Farrukh

The new building for the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA), made amongst the remains of an old textile factory, was opened for use in 2018. The ground for a newer EKA building is being prepared behind the current building. A new green sign, with the signature EKA typeface was erected to mark this site within the last week.

Part of the process of envisioning, designing and producing new and newer EKA buildings, is the narrativisation and historicisation of these sites, most visibly undertaken as marketing materials, often to attract new students to the university. the door stopis a zine that seeks to broaden narrativisation and historicisation of EKA through the observation, documentation, story-telling and imaginations of the building from the student perspective, with particular attention to use, care, appropriation, resistance, creative misuse, image-based intervention and other forms that fall outside of the intentions of the architect(s) and hegemony of the institution.

Composed of photography, text and sketches, the door stop, though limited to the perspective of three students, hopes to document the overlooked and the ephemeral; foster care, interest and engagement in the space amongst students + their future generations; and to possibly influence change in the production of further EKA buildings.

Looking for Action

By Christian Hörner, Paulina Schroeder, Nabeel Imtiaz

Techno-Ecologies of Care emerge throughout the entanglements between the courier, his mobile phone, the car, the food, and many other things, affording moments of caring for and about in this system of provision of life-sustaining matter. Our project tries to present illuminating documentation of the everyday work of a bolt food courier. These urban workers are often invisible, working under a highly neoliberal regime of platform capitalism. Also, they are directly exposed to novel algorithmic means which manage their routes and govern the relationship between couriers, restaurants, and customers which make up the urban space of food delivery. Our video emerged out of the empirical practice of participant observation and represents a methodical mixture of interview/conversation and active participation in the process of food delivery. We aim to shed light on the internalities of food delivery in the sense of capturing the potentially boring details of everydayness as proposed by Susan Leigh Star in her essay “The Ethnography of Infrastructure”.

The main program of the Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2022 combines food and architecture

The 6th Tallinn Architecture Biennale “Edible; Or, The Architecture of Metabolism” invites architects and architecture enthusiasts to think about a sustainable future, where natural processes are used and waste is reduced.

Biennale curators Lydia Kallipoliti (Greece/USA) and Areti Markopoulou (Spain/Greece) in cooperation with Estonian adviser Ivan Sergejev and curator’s assistant Sonia Sobrino Ralston (USA) give architects, planners and environmental designers the opportunity to discuss and explore how through architecture it is possible to influence circular economy operations such as food and energy production and resource degradation.

TAB 2022 chief curators Lydia Kallipoliti and Areti Markopoulou are critical of the consuming and polluting human-made environment and invite to imagine an architecture that produces resources and uses and decomposes its waste. “Amid the current crisis of public health, climate change and social inequality, it is clear that the fragility of our supply chains requires new forms of local sourcing and production. TAB 2022 addresses the question of ‘where our food comes from’ as a creative design challenge and raises questions about the aesthetic, cultural and experiential qualities of the environment around us throughout its life cycle,” explained TAB 2022 chief curators Kallipoliti and Markopoulou.

Estonian Academy of Arts is happy to contribute to the versatile programme of TAB with international conference “Innovation and Digital Reality”, taking place on 6 September at EKA. Read more and sign up.

See the entire TAB 2022 program here: https://2022.tab.ee/et/programm/

The curatorial exhibition “Edible” brings together world-class designers and architects, whose works are divided into five thematic blocks: Metabolic Home, From Stone to Mull, Food and Geopolitics, Archeology of Architecture and Food Systems, and Future Food.

In addition, the chief curators have put together a 2-day “Edible” conference program for architects, designers and others interested in the space. The program includes exciting discussions about the importance of design in urban space, the effects of history on today’s environment, as well as discussions about the city of the future. The main speakers of the symposium will be Beatriz Colomina, the well-known author of design books, Andrés Jaque, the head of the design and research studio Effekt and the research center Office for Political Innovation.

As part of the TAB 2022 installation competition, the installation “Fungible Non Fungible” by IHEARTBLOB (Austria, UK, Estonia) will appear in front of the Estonian Museum of Architecture. It is the world’s first blockchain-financed architectural project. Their work gives a completely new dimension to the traditional role of an architect – an architect is no longer just a master, but a system designer who brings together innovative technologies, encouraging communities and local masters to be part of the creative process. For this, the IHEARTBLOB team is creating a NFT (Non-Fungible Token) platform where those who wish can design and buy a piece of the work. The result is a unique installation created and owned by different designers from all over the world. The platform for joint design of the installation will be opened in May.

The main program of TAB 2022 consists of five parts: a curatorial exhibition and an installation competition program at the Estonian Museum of Architecture, a 2-day symposium and a vision competition exhibition at the Kultuurikatel, and an international exhibition of architecture schools at the EKKM garden.

TAB 2022 invites all Ukrainian architects to participate in the TAB program free of charge. More information about free admission at info@tab.ee.

The main sponsor of the Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2022 is Thermory – the world’s largest manufacturer of chemical-free thermal wood, whose material has been used in outstanding projects in more than 50 countries around the world.

Supporters and partners of TAB 2022: Ministry of Culture, Cultural Endowment, European Development Fund, British Council, Onassis Culture, Visit Estonia, Association of Estonian Architects, Estonian Architecture Museum, Tallinn City Planning Board, IAAC, Friendship Products, Laufen, Ruukki, Velux, Tallink Hotels, Estonian Academy of Arts.