Category: Departments

Social Design Days

8-9 September, EKA

In Estonia, 40.000 children are affected by mental illness. €164 million worth of food is discarded every year. And there is an urgent need to understand the difficult experience of the over 45.000 Ukrainian refugees that have arrived to our country. How could an expertise in social design help us to deal with these issues?

Twenty-two professionals in the field are meeting at the Estonian Academy of Arts to discuss questions such as: 

• What is the political impact of design?
• Why is design a social practice?
• And can we understand social transformations with design techniques?

The frontiers of design are rapidly expanding within society; In the recent years, design practice has moved beyond the ideation of commercial products and is more and more considered as a set of techniques for engaging with complex problems.  Hence, there is a need to open up the roles of design within wider economic and political issues.

As explained by Bori Fehér, leader of the Social Design Research HUB at MOME: “This event will contribute to giving form to a rapidly expanding field of study, developing new ways of inclusive design and social intervention in Estonia”.

EKA is opening a new MA programme in Social Design. Students will gain an understanding of design as a political force, while expanding their capacity to intervene in contemporary issues and comprehend social transformations.

Experienced colleagues from all over Europe are joining us to discuss the key questions in the field. For instance, Guy Julier has written about activism and the economies of design; Jesko Fezer about architecture and community making; Eeva Berglund about how to research environmental activism; Adam Drazin about design anthropology; Jussi Koitela about hospitality and interdisciplinary projects; Maija Rozenfelde about design institutions; Liene Ozoliņa about social theory; Bianca Herlo about bottom-up politics and civic infrastructures; and Alvise Mattozzi about innovation and sustainability, just to name a few key topics of expertise. 

Likewise, we are organising a series of experimental workshops and fieldtrips with local and international colleagues, exploring a wide range of issues, such as multi-species communication, mental health and indigenous rights.

As a result, Tallinn will become the European capital of Social Design in September.

Thursday, 8 September A-101

10:30 Round table: What can social design promise?

Participants: Bori Fehér (MOME Budapest), Guy Julier (Aalto), Alvise Mattozzi (Politecnico Torino), Ruth-H. Melioranski (EKA)

13:30 Open formats A-307

• Feral Tracking / Multispecies Conversari by Hermione Spriggs (UCL)
• Design for advocacy in the Global South by Nathaly Pinto (Aalto)

16:00 Field visit to Paljassaare by Andra Aaloe

Friday, 9 September A-306

10:15 Round table: When, where, with whom, what for? The social is not singular

Participants: Eeva Berglund (Aalto), Jesko Fezer (HFBK Hamburg), Bianca Herlo (UDK Berlin), Liene Ozoliņa (Latvian Academy of Culture)

13:15 Round Table: How do we evaluate interdisciplinary projects?

Participants: Adam Drazin (UCL), Jussi Koitela (Frame Finland); Maija Rozenfelde (Art Academy of Latvia), Indrek Sirkel (EKA)

15:00 Open Format: Social Design projects in EKA

• Ott Kagovere & Sandra Nuut: snail mail, redesigning the times and spaces that we give ourselves to say and understand things
• Eva Liisa Kubinyi & Maarja Mõtus, mitigating mental health problems among youth 
• Kristi Kuusk, social design for children with special needs
• Urmas Lüüs, loneliness of elderly people

16:15 Field visit to Lasnamäe by Maria Derlõš

Please, register here.

For more details, please contact:
Francisco Martínez
francisco.martinez@artun.ee / +372 58038079

This project of the Baltic-German University Liaison Office is supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with funds from the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic Germany.

Peer-reviewing of Art and Design PhD student Nesli Hazal Oktay’s first design case study “Empathic Placebos—Designing for the bodies in videotelephony” will take place on Friday, September 2, at 15.00-17.00 (EEST) in the Estonian Academy of Arts, auditorium A501.

Nesli Hazal Oktay will present the design process and analysis of the project. Case study “Empathic Placebos—Designing for the bodies in videotelephony” is part of the doctoral thesis of Nesli Hazal Oktay.

The peer review event will be in a hybrid format. Please find the Zoom link to participate HERE.

Supervisors
Dr. Kristi Kuusk, Estonian Academy of Arts
Prof. Danielle Wilde, Umeå University, Sweden and University of Southern Denmark

Reviewers:
Dr. Kristina Andersen, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands
Dr. Oscar Tomico, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands and Barcelona School of Design and Engineering

The research project titled “Empathic Placebos—Designing for the bodies in videotelephony” is an inquiry into the ways people feel, interact and move during video calls. The project works with the moving bodies as a creative material to design for people who are close by heart but physically apart. Relying on a cultural probe kit study and a three-step embodied design ideation process, the project invites digital natives to be more in contact with their bodies so that they have more chances to shape their experiences with their loved ones and themselves.

Nesli Hazal Oktay is a designer-researcher and educator focusing on the impacts and interactions the emerging technologies could deliver. She holds an MA in Interaction Design from the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn and a Communications BA from the Galatasaray University in Istanbul. Since the academic year 2019/20, she is working as a visiting lecturer and also as a curriculum developer of the Interaction Design MA at the Estonian Academy of Arts. As an educator, she has led several industry collaborations, and her subjects are shaped around interaction design and speculative design. While continuing her journey as a design educator she is also studying at the Academy as a doctoral student. Her research interests include embodied, participatory, and speculative approaches to design. For more information, please visit https://neslihazal.com/

Katariin Mudist at Tartu Art House
“To-Do or Not-To-Do”
29.07.–28.08.22

The exhibition, showcasing themes that have long intrigued the artist, focuses on a newly completed monumental piece the exhibition has been named after. The 9-meter-long mixed media composition speaks of the contemporary productivity culture and anxiety relating to both action and inaction resulting from the global pandemic situation.

The inspiration behind the exhibited works is Mudist’s longtime self-critical study centered around to-do lists that have accumulated over several years. The central piece “To-Do or Not-To-Do” visualises activities along with their temporal dimensions – starting new activities, as well as interruptions – and treats this input as anthropological and psychological data which, in turn, reveals interesting patterns describing both the pace of life and the state of mind of an individual.

The exhibition and artwork of the same name are at once personal and remarkably universal studies visualising choices, disruption, inactivity, and exhaustion – both the internal and the societal pressure to be productive.

Katariin Mudist (b 1994) has studied in the Tartu Art College and the Estonian Academy of Arts, supplementing her skills in Budapest and in Ghent. Her previous solo exhibition in Tartu was in 2020 in the Jakobi Gallery.

The exhibition is supported: Estonian Cultural Foundation and Anderson’s craft beer

Exhibition design: Alden Jõgisuu

Exhibition team: Tanel Asmer, Elika Kiilo-Kulpsoo, Johanna Mudist, Peeter Talvistu, Urmo Teekivi and Mae Variksoo

Thanks: Sander Koit, Alan Voodla, Sophie Durand and Maria Elise Remme

The exhibition is open until 28 August

Tartu Art House (Vanemuise 26, Tartu, Estonia) Wed–Mon 12–18. Exhibitions are free of charge

The exhibitions of the Tartu Art House are supported by the Tartu Town Government and the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Peer review event of Art and Design PhD student Dila Demir’s second design case study „Caring Companion“ will take place on August 22, 14.00-15.30 at EKA, room A501.
Dila Demir will present the design process and analysis of the project. Along with the peer review event there will be a physical exhibition at EKA on the fifth floor. Case study „Caring Companion“ is part of the artistic doctoral thesis of Dila Demir.

The peer review event will be in hybrid format. Please find Zoom link to participate HERE

Reviewers: Dr. Vasiliki Tsaknaki, assistant professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, Dr. Claudia Nuñez-Pacheco, post-doctoral researcher at KTH, Royal Institute of Technology
Supervisors: Dr. Nithikul Nimkulrat and Dr. Kristi Kuusk.

Dila is working in the field of interactive textiles, bodily discomforting experiences i.e., pain, soma design, and somaesthetics. Her second design case titled Caring Companion discusses the emergence of designing discomforting interactions that demonstrates how repeated engagement with the discomfort can lead to new becomings and inform the design of better engaging wearable interactive artefacts (soma extensions). Dila regards bodily discomforts as disturbing experiences that disrupts the everyday flow of the bodies such as fibromyalgia, depression, IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) or chronic pain. She specifically works with the chronic pain and aim to induce sensory bodily awareness in her doctoral research. Accordingly, Caring Companion is a collection of various items in the form of a cultural probe kit (CPK) for encouraging people to engage with their bodily discomfort, specifically, chronic pain. Five participants with chronic pain used the Caring Companion kit for a minimum of four days a week for three weeks. For the study, they wore the soma extension – a soft textile artifact – that was included in the kit to practice yoga sequences shown in a YouTube video. They inserted their phones into the soma extension for localized sound effect. After each practice, they reflected on their felt experience of moving with the soma extension textually in the journal and visually by drawing body maps included in the kit and forming the plasticine. Additionally, they choose the words that best describe their felt experiences from the word list that includes 42 words to which they were free to add different words as well. The Caring Companion became part of their routines and supported them to engage and reflect upon their bodily experiences concerning pain.

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

The exhibition Halcyon, by Estonian contemporary artist Kadri Liis Rääk, is happening in the capital of Peru, Lima.

Welcome to the inaugural exhibition of Now: Gallery, in which Kadri Liis Rääk exhibits tufted soft sculptures inspired by the bubbling abundance of life, ceramic forms inspired by symbiotic landscapes and microbes, and chimerically transformed industrial design. In her works, we witness a speculative utopian world built, where various biological life forms meet at the hub of the rhizome, conversing with sensitive ways of being together.

Kadri Liis Rääk’s work evolves from an empathetic worldview where touch carries a crucial role in gathering information and relating to one-another. At the exhibition, she exhibits works prepared in Reykjavík, at SIM residency, but also in the residency which preceded the exhibition in Lima. Halcyon is curated by Marika Agu.

One of the founders and gallerist of Now: Gallery, Renzo Pittaluga remarked on the connection between Kadri Liis’ textile and ceramic practice with traditional Peruvian artforms. “What Kadri Liis has absorbed with her research and experiences is very relevant in the local context,” said Pittaluga.

11.08. – 14.09.2022

Now: Gallery, Av. Conquistadores 780, San Isidro, Lima, Peru.

Roemer van Toorn, external PhD candidate of the Estonian Academy of Arts, curriculum of Architecture and Urban Planning, will defend his thesis „Making Architecture Politically. From Fresh Conservatism to Aesthetics as a Form of Politics“ on 7th of September 2022 at 15.00 at Põhja pst 7, room A501.

The defence can be followed in EKA TV  tv.artun.ee.

External reviewers: Prof. Panu Lehtovuori (Tampere University of Technology), Prof. Arie Graafland (Delft University of Technology).

Opponent: Prof. Arie Graafland

The defense will be held in English.

Making Architecture Politically opens with an analysis of the current conjecture of Neoliberalism through the concept of the Society of the And, opposing an understanding of our condition through modes of Eitherorism. It is a voyage, travelling along the many interdependencies of the revolutionary conservatisms of Fresh Conservatism and Progressive Neoliberalism today — parallel to the arrival of a new phase of global modernisation with a special and elaborated focus on the role of contemporary architecture in Dutch society from the 1990s — while its second chapter moves beyond Fresh Conservatism; towards a possible third of emancipation in architecture with its plea for an Aesthetics as a Form of Politics towards a cosmopolitical outlook.

Chapter one, entitled Fresh Conservatism critically addresses how the much-celebrated Superdutch movement in architecture paved the way of an upcoming Neoliberal phase of capitalism. The problem for many was not to make political architecture, on the contrary, its innovative practices — without being too conscious about the political — affirmed what later was called the post-political. With Aesthetics as a Form of Politics of chapter two, exemplary alternative horizons of possibility are being discerned; ones that make architecture politically through their aesthetic regime. It has everything to do with how freedom can be created with constraints, how one can dance with enmeshment, can move beyond limiting adversary, and dare to create lives of sustained optimal wellbeing and joy through the redistribution of the sensible. By grappling with making architecture politically, finding it wanting through critical analysis, observing the exemplary and often a-political role contemporary Dutch architecture played in the 90s and onward, it turns out the problem is not to make political architecture — all architecture is political — but how to make architecture politically.

Making architecture politically is about the creation of running room; a sense of polity — an aesthetic regime redistributing the sensible — that allows for a multiplication of connections and disconnections that reframe the relations between people, the world they live in, and the way they are supposed to act and behave. Such a field of possibility concerns a multiplicity of folds and gaps in the fabric of the common experience of the human and non-human that change the cartography of the perceptible, the imaginative and the feasible. As such, it allows for new modes of political construction of common objects and emancipatory possibilities of collective and private enunciation. Instead of slipping into paternalism or control, the idea of such a radical openness is characterized by indeterminacy, nuance, incommensurability, dissensus and the multitude of encounters it could generate. It is about a becoming that breaks open the conventional way space is experienced, thought and distributed, one that displaces the binary dialectics of colonizer and colonized, the one against the other by introducing a third (And) that belongs to both the one and the other while opening alternative horizons.

Members of the Defence Committee: Dr. Jüri Soolep, Dr. Anu Allas, Dr. Renee Puusepp, Prof. Maros Krivy, Prof. Andres Kurg, Prof. Klaske Havik, Prof. Claus Peder Pedersen.

Please find the PhD thesis HERE.

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.