Open Lecture: Pablo Hermansen “Counter Designing”

Pablo Ignacio Hermansen Ulibarri – Visiting Lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Arts

Pablo Ignacio Hermansen Ulibarri is a designer with a PhD in Architecture and Urban Studies. He teaches and conducts research at the School of Design at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. His work focuses on co-design, interaction design, socio-natural ecosystems, photo-ethnography, performative politics in public space, more-than-human prototyping, and public services as public space.

He will be visiting the Estonian Academy of Arts from April 14–16 and will give a public lecture, “Counter Designing: Animals and Algorithms as Creative Agents,” on April 16 at 18:00 in room A501.

In January, EKA Interaction Design students visited his university in Chile to develop collaborative projects and academic exchange.

In this seminar, we will summarise the results of the EAA research project ‘Art history in the contact zone: popular and fictional in Estonian art (history) writing’ (2023-2024).

Our aim was to explore different ways of representing art (history), i.e. to investigate how art has been presented by an external medium of the art world, and whether and how this has changed the meanings of art familiar to us – academic researchers. Each of us dealt with a different “medium”: fiction, film, journalism, heritage creation, schematic and photographic narrative, television presentation, art criticism.

At the seminar we will also present one of the final products of our project – a special issue of journal Vikerkaar, edited by Johannes Saar. The authors of the articles are Epp Lankots, Kädi Talvoja, Liisa-Helena Lumberg-Paramonova, Tiina Abel, Kristina Jõekalda, Krista Kodres.

On April 17 at 13.00 Marta Konovalov’s second peer-reviewed process “Designer, the resilient gardener”, will take place in room A-501.
The reviewers of the process are Dr Marium Durrani and Prof Danielle Wilde (Umeå University, University of Southern Denmark).
Supervisors are Dr Kristi Kuusk ( EKA) and Dr Julia Valle Noronha (Aalto University).

Marta Konovalov invites you to view her garden and her research artefacts. She presents the second phase of her doctoral research on repair and regenerative textile design.
With her practice-based research she investigates how a designer can promote emotional durability and support the development of the aesthetics of affect in the context of fashion and textiles. To better understand the potential of regenerative textile design Marta Konovalov discusses the common values of my textile repair and gardening practice from the overlapping perspective of a designer, mender and an amateur gardener. She has set out to explore how a designer can address crises and encourage response-ability resilient practice through the interconnected activities.
With this work she aims to promote the discussion over interfering in the standardised, growth oriented processes of textile production and to empower the individual and nature in the multifaceted crises.

Marta Konovalov is a designer-researcher, craftivist and educator focusing on repair and regenerative textile design. She is a lecturer and doctoral student at Estonian Academy of Arts.

On April 16 at 11.00 Kadri Liis Rääk’s second peer-reviewed exhibition “Morphogenesis”, will take place in the ARS Project Space, Pärnu mnt 154.

The exhibition’s peer reviewers are Dr. Erik Alalooga and Professor Esa Kirkkopelto.
The supervisor of the doctoral thesis is Dr. Liina Unt.

The second creative project is part of Kadri Liis Rääk’s doctoral thesis, “Touch and Tactility as a Means for Shared Immersion in Art” which focuses on embodied, multisensory experiences within the exhibition context. Using methods of expanded scenography, Rääk explores how to create immersive spaces for alternative encounters through interactive bodily sculptures, atmospheric mood, and tactility. Through sculptures grounded in her own bodily experiences, Rääk examines the singularity of experience and the boundaries of self and the Other. She is initerested in what beliefs and values are carried with oneself and the surrounding world, and how these are expressed through the experience of touch.

Kadri Liis Rääk is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher, focusing on creating immersive and tactile environments. Operating simultaneously in the expanded fields of art and design, she investigates how tactile interactions with artworks shift perceptions and foster dialogues extending beyond the visible. She studied scenography (BA) and contemporary art (MA) at the Estonian Academy of Arts and autonomous design (MA) at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent (KASK, Belgium). Her works engage with bodily and symbolic narratives, addressing entanglements and dialogues between humans and other life forms. She has participated in exhibitions and residencies in Peru, Czech Republic, Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, and Estonia.

We look forward to seeing you at the opening of the CTC – Climate Truth Crisis exhibition on 11.04, at 14:00, in the open area in front of the Estonian Academy of Arts (Põhja pst 7).

The CTC – Climate Truth Crisis project deals with the spread of misinformation and understanding the climate crisis. The project involves educating young designers in these areas, creating a website that gathers information about the topic, publishing a podcast series, a dictionary and a collection of articles. In addition, students are visualizing the topic in various media. More information on the project website: https://www.climatetruthcrisis.eu/

The first workshop of the project will take place at the Estonian Academy of Arts on 7-11 April, during which students will write down concepts related to the topic, visualize them and on Friday, 11 April, open an exhibition in a public space in front of the EKA to introduce the topic to a wider audience.

The workshop is held in cooperation with the EKA Graphic Design Department and the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu. The students will be supervised by semioticians, conspiracy theory and disinformation researchers Mari-Liis Madisson and Daniel Tamm, Laura Vilbiks from the Estonian Foundation for Nature (ELF), and graphic designers Laura Merendi, Ott Kagovere and Kert Viiart. In addition to the supervisors, there will be students and lecturers from Bosnia, Spain, the Netherlands, England, Iceland and Lithuania.

In addition to the workshop, there will also be lectures open to the wider audience:

09.04, 16:00, A502 (EKA, Põhja pst 7)
Artist Kristina Õllek with a presentation Absorbing Hypoxic Water

10.04, 16:00, A300 (EKA, Põhja pst 7)
Graphic designer Maria Muuk with a presentation Graphic Design as a Degrowth Practice

The project will last for three years, 2025-2028, and workshops will be held at various partner universities:

Academy of Fine Arts Sarajevo,

Estonian Academy of Arts,

ELISAVA,

Iceland University of the Arts,

Royal Academy of Art, The Hague,

University of the Arts London,

Vilnius Academy of Arts

The 2025 Spring semester session of the Open Lectures ”City as novel ecosystem” focuses on landscape architecture and, more specifically, urban nature. 

The lecture series is being put together by landscape architects Karin Bachmann, Merle Karro-Kalberg and Anna-Liisa Unt, who have co-founded and edited the landscape architecture magazine ÕU for 7 years and are currently leading the project “Curated Biodiversity”, which experiments with ways to make urban landscaping more diverse as an environment. Therefore, the open lectures in the spring will also turn their attention to the quality of the space between buildings and, using the speakers’ words and creations, show how to make the city more biodiverse and enjoyable and how people and other species that call the city their home can live in symbiosis.

On April 24 at 6 pm, Penfornis will take the stage in the EKA auditorium to introduce the 20-year practice of the landscape architecture office Taktyk, share the outcomes of he enquiries through design, point at critical future directions.

From Rotterdam to Barcelona, from Paris to Brussels and more lately Zurich, the practice Taktyk has since 2005, been envisaged as an evolving entity, adaptive and responsive to new heterogeneous and complex challenges. For the last 20 years Taktyk acts as a conductor, curator, and mediator of transformation processes using tacit knowledge of gardening, bricolage and painting. The lecture will highlight the emergence and evolution of our voice in the field and how we envision its future.

Taktyk is a landscape architecture office based in Paris and Brussels that experiments with introducing lush plant communities into existing spatial situations. The contrast between the natural and the built environment becomes very visible in their works, because special attention is given to creating new spatial quality that arises from the overlap between the two. New environments are always born from coworking with future users.

The lectures are intended for all disciplines, not only for students and professionals in the field of architecture.

All lectures are held on Thursdays at 6 pm in the EKA main auditorium. All lectures are in English and free of charge.

Schedule of the Spring 2025 lectures:

March 27. Toposcape:

April 3. Ingo Kowarik

April 10. Jan van Schaik

April 24. Taktyk

Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Faculty of Architecture of EKA presents a dozen unique practitioners and valued theorists in the field in Tallinn every academic year.

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

www.avatudloengud.ee

SILICATE ONTOLOGY I. A material and social history 1900-2025
EKA Gallery 11.–27.04.2025
Opening: 11.04.2025 at 6pm
Open Tue–Sat 12–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm, free entry

Silicate embodies the evolution of 20th-century Estonian architecture. Among the few widely available materials during Soviet deficits, silicate played a crucial role in shaping both monumental and everyday architecture – from the heyday of functionalist villas to self-built garages, from standardised apartment buildings to military infrastructure.

Through a kaleidoscopic lens, the exhibition marries perspectives from material science, architectural history, and cultural anthropology to critically examine the contested status of silicate and its potential for future application. Interwoven throughout are the insights of alumni and research conducted by students and scholars of the Estonian Academy of Arts.

In an era of increasing resource constraints, the exhibition invites viewers to consider whether, and how, material contaminated by Soviet association can be reborn anew.

Curated by: Henri Kopra ja Iiris Tähti Toom (Spatialist Studio)
Technical support: Erik Hõim

The exhibition is supported by the Estonian Association of Architects, the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Tallinn City, Bauroc and Sadolin Estonia.
Opening drinks from Põhjala Brewery.

Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot
→ Lecture performance: [UN]FINISHED
→ Screening: Barbaresou Legacy, or The Cursed One, 2024
→ Book presentation: [UN]FINISHED – Atlas of Athens’ Incomplete Buildings – A Story of Hidden Antimonuments (Jam Sam Books, 2023)

The architectural archetype of the unfinished concrete building can be found everywhere in the Athenian cityscape. Those structures, left in the middle of a discontinued building process in a seemingly never-ending pause, are signs of invisible financial and political forces defining the physical appearance of the city. With its character of a ruin of a forgotten purpose the unfinished building is at the same time pointing to the past and to the future, as a frozen moment of time preserved ever since its volume reached that concrete state. The unfinished concrete skeletons of Athens are keepers of stories that are evidence of unseen structures that form the Greek society: family, bureaucracy, and finance. The work of Lalou & Aymo-Boot makes apparent how these ever-present factors continuously influence the everyday of the city and its inhabitants.

The full story of Barbaresou Legacy, or The Cursed One is included as one of the chapters in the book [UN]FINISHED – Atlas of Athens’ Incomplete Buildings – A Story of Hidden Antimonuments by Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot, published in 2023 by Jap Sam Books.

Maria Lalou is a Greek conceptual sculptor and experimental filmmaker. Her work focuses on the politics of the viewer in the form of installations, performances, filmic documents and publications. She has presented her work internationally in exhibitions, screenings and lectures and published two monographs: [theatro] (Onomatopee, 2015) and the camera (Dolce Publications, 2019).

Skafte Aymo-Boot is a Danish architect with an independent design and research practice. He has realised a variety of permanent and temporary works in Europe and Asia, many of which are the result of collaborations with artists operating in the overlap between architecture and visual art. He is also a partner at the architectural office OP – Open Platform in Copenhagen.

Since 2012, Lalou & Aymo-Boot have worked together on [UN]FINISHED, their continuous research on the unfinished concrete buildings of Athens. In 2020, they founded cross section archive in Athens, a space for art and architecture, exploring urban phenomena that occur in the intersection of those disciplines and how historical facts, political structures and everyday circumstances have been interfering with, forming, and directing them. They curate an annual thematic program of research and exhibitions, inviting artists, architects and thinkers to collectively investigate and expand the theme at stake, and publish the zine Document.

Contemporary Art and Context is a lecture series hosted by MA Contemporary Art and features talks by artists, curators, and researchers, offering diverse perspectives on contemporary art practices and their societal contexts.

The lecture takes place in English, everyone is welcome to join!

The 2025 spring semester session of the Open Lectures “City as Novel Ecosystem” focuses on landscape architecture, specifically the interaction of the city, people and nature. In connection with the EKA doctoral school conference taking place on April 10, the lecture series will include a lecture by one of the seminar’s keynote speakers on the meaning of research methods.

On April 10 at 6 pm, Dr. Jan van Schaik will give an open lecture “The work is the Knowledge” in the EKA main auditorium.

Jan van Schaik will discuss the productive conflict inherent in reflective practice research – namely that there are both benefits and detriments to halting the flow-state of creating to critically observe that same act of creating. And he will discuss how reflective practice research is bound to a networked community of practice, and how defining and owning this binding is critical to a practitioner making a case for the existence of an original contribution to knowledge in their own work.

Dr Jan van Schaik is an artist and architect based in Melbourne. He is the director of MvS Architects, a researcher and PhD supervisor at RMIT Architecture & Urban Design, founder of +Concepts creative practice presentation and performance series, author of the Lost Tablets artwork series, and the design director of creative sector strategy and advocacy consultancy Future Tense. Making art about architecture, and vice versa, Jan is engaged in the governance and communities of both.

The lectures are intended for all disciplines, not only for students and professionals in the field of architecture.

All lectures are held on Thursdays at 6 pm in the EKA main auditorium. All lectures are in English and free of charge.

Schedule of the Spring 2025 lectures:

March 27. Toposcape: Justyna Dziedziejko & Magdalena Wnęk 

April 3. Ingo Kowarik

April 10. Jan van Schaik

April 24. Taktyk

Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Faculty of Architecture of EKA presents a dozen unique practitioners and valued theorists in the field in Tallinn every academic year.

www.avatudloengud.ee

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

Lecture by Dr. Jan van Schaik will be held in cooperation with the Estonian Doctoral School for Engineering and Technology. Project “Cooperation between universities to promote doctoral studies” (2021-2027.4.04.24-0003) is co-funded by the European Union.