Category: Faculty of Architecture

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! 

The series of open architecture lectures will take place this spring under the title “Close enough” and will bring architects from Latvia and Lithuania to the stage in Tallinn. We will examine how our neighbours operate topics arising from similar built environments and history. The lectures are intended for students and professionals from any and all disciplines – not just in the field of architecture. All lectures take place in the large auditorium of EKA, are in English and free of charge.

On March 31, the Latvian architectural collective ĒTER, led by Kārlis Bērziņš, Dagnija Smilga and Niklāvs Paegle, will arrive in Tallinn. ĒTER is an architectural practice founded in 2018 in Riga, focusing on space inspired by nature, technology and modern culture. When looking at the city, culture and living patterns, they preferably move in uncharted areas. As a natural part of the architectural firm, they see strategic and conceptual thinking, inventing their own tasks and involving international experts. ETER are architects, researchers and teachers whose fields range from the Baltic coast to the Alps.

Why are the Baltics our focus for this spring? Read lecture series’ curator Johan Tali’s short interview to find out.

The series of open architecture lectures will take place this spring under the title “Close enough” and will bring architects from Latvia and Lithuania to the stage in Tallinn. We will examine how our neighbours operate topics arising from similar built environments and history. The lectures are intended for students and professionals from any and all disciplines – not just in the field of architecture. All lectures take place in the large auditorium of EKA, are in English and free of charge.

The first lecture in the lecture series will be on March 3 at 6 pm by Petras Išora and Ona Lozuraitytė, who launched Isora x Lozuraityte Studio for Architecture in Vilnius in 2014. Creative duo exercise a cooperative practice, linking the spheres of architecture, public infrastructure, art, ecology, landscape. The two designers have been engaged in a number of interdisciplinary collaborations at a variety of scales, both nationally and internationally. The studio is characterised by cooperation and collaboration with other practises or subjects in art and architectural fields, is focused on urban narratives, public spaces, landscape projects, public infrastructure, social and cultural projects, experiments with the matter in exhibition, interior design, exterior and architecture of the wider environment.

NB! This lecture is part of the EAA Open Day program, the rest of the program can be found here.

The rest of this Spring’s architecture lecture programme can be found here.

On Tuesday, February 22, at 6 pm, Adrià Carbonell will give a public lecture “Contra Naturam: The Emergence of Modern Urbanism in Barcelona” in the hall of EKA (A-101)

Adrià Carbonell is an architect and urbanist. He is a lecturer in architecture at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and has previously lectured at KU Leuven, Tallinn University of Technology, Umeå Universitet, and the American University of Sharjah. He is co-founder of the research collaborative Aside, where he writes on the interplay between architecture, territory, politics and the environment. He has co-edited the book Infrastructural Love: Caring for Our Architectural Support Systems (Birkhäuser, 2022). His writings have been published in PLAN, ACE: Architecture, City and Environment, ZARCH Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Architecture and Urbanism, San Rocco, MONU, Cartha, among others. His current research addresses two guiding questions in innovative urbanism: how to reframe cosmopolitical spatial practices and how to challenge existing urban inequalities through processes of territorial redistribution.

Lecture is in English and open to the public.

The lecture will also be broadcast on EKA TV

The lecture is organized by the Faculty of Architecture of EKA together with the Estonian Association of Architects.

The lecture is supported by European Regional Development Fund.

EKA Research Cafe:

What do urbanists do? From urban research to practice

Urban Studies have been taught at the Estonian Academy of Arts for sixteen years, 48 students have altogether received a master’s degree. Urbanists educated in Estonia work in research, in public and private sectors, here and all over the world. We invite you to take part in an evening of discussions where we will explore expressions of this interdisciplinary speciality situated at the border of theory and practice and talk about what do urbanists do.

We ask, what are the most relevant research directions on the field today, is there anything specific about Estonian Urbanism and what is the role of the urban studies curriculum in understanding and developing the field.

The head of the curriculum, Prof. Maroš Krivý will talk about his own research, including Marie Skłodowska-Curie early stage researcher grant for contemporary urban history. Lecturers Keiti Kljavin and Kaija-Luisa Kurik will give an insight into their practices as educators and urbanists. Additionally, Mattias Malk and Sean Tyler, both PhD students of urban studies, will join the discussion.

We offer coffee and snacks!

The event is in English.

The event is supported by the European Regional Development Fund.

Architects-critics Andres Sevtšuk and Lily Song from the USA will take part in the mid-term evaluation of the 5th year master’s projects. They create public discussion, giving feedback on the work and criticizing it.

The mid-term open evaluation of masters projects will take place in room A-501
Mon, December 20 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Tue, Dec. 21 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

We do ask you to carry your COVID vaccination certificate or proof of having had COVID and cover your nose and mouth with a mask. Academy students are subject to the usual in-house rules.

Andres Sevtšuk is an Associate Professor of Urban Science and Planning at MIT, where he also leads the City Form Lab. He was previously an Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and has worked as an urban planner, designer and researcher in Estonia, France, Singapore, Indonesia and the USA.

Lily Song is an urban planner and scholar activist whose research, teaching and practice seek to accomplish infrastructure based mobilisations and experiments led by frontline communities and organisers in American cities and other decolonising contexts. She currently serves as Assistant Professor of Race and Social Justice in the Built Environment at Northeastern University.

The season of open lectures is supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Paljassaare time capsules: hiding, making, stalking, digging, hopping, skipping, crawling, barking, hawking, hoping, expecting, lingering, sludging, metabolizing, digesting, dismantling, defending, demolishing, augmenting, building, intending, archiving, recreating  …  (etc never-ending)

Paljassaare, a place of wonderment in the periphery of Tallinn’s imagination, a nature’s reserve, a utopian paradise, a blessing in disguise, a magic potion, a myth, a cradle of birds, so green, so much green and so much peace. On the other side, Paljassaare has a disturbing presence of a parallel reality of illusions of all kinds that makes this peninsula a multiplicity of time capsules. It invites us to break beyond the realms of past, present, and future, and to peel through its endless secrets and triumph over this highly contested land.

Armed with warm clothing and winter boots, we invite you to join the group of first-year Urban Studies Master students at the Estonian Academy of Arts for the final critique of their works developed in the framework of the Urbanization Studio, tutored by Keiti Kljavin and Andra Aaloe. 

The exhibition-expedition will take place in situ all across Paljassaare and includes ten individual project stations (audio-walks and talks, immersive projections and installations, parties and screenings, exhibitions) approachable by foot. Be prepared for crispy cold temperatures, a lot of walking and long hours spent outside and bring along an extra pair of warm socks, snacks and a mug for tea refills along the way.

We kindly ask you to bring along your own earphones and devices with a data connection. If possible, take along a charger and/or a power bank to make sure your device can successfully endure this expedition.

Practicalities:

We will meet on Saturday, the 18th of December, at 10.45 (bus nr. 59 arrival time) at Pikakari bus stop, where, followed by a short introduction, we will collectively move towards the first project location of the day. The tour will end around 17.00. The event will be held in English.

The authors exposed: Kush Badhwar, Khadeeja Farrukh, Christian Hörner, Nabeel Imtiaz, Luca Liese Ritter, Paul Simon, Nora Soo, Katrin Tomiste, Paula Kristiāna Veidenbauma, Friederike Zängl.

Studio leads: Keiti Kljavin and Andra Aaloe

** FOR EMERGENCIES: if you get lost during the day you can call Paula Veidenbauma +37128642280**

More information and programme here!

In December the Urban Studies department organizes two public events. The student exhibition “Fitness and the city” (opening 7 December, 15.00) encompasses topics ranging from housing and care to normativsity and semiocapitalism to ask how “fitness” produces value in the contemporary city.

On 18 December, a student-led
walk through Tallinn’s Paljassaare will explore how neoliberal urbanism and
resistances to it shape this contested urban landscape. Resulting from two separate resarch studio courses, the exhibition and the walk illustrate Urban Studies’s twin emphasis on critical theory and field research. More info on the program’s homepage.