EKA Design Showcase 2021

For the fourth year in a row the EKA Design Showcase will once again present the best cooperation projects of EKA’s students with companies and public sector organizations. An event introducing 16 innovative designs resulting from the cooperation projects will take place on January 14th.

The concepts, prototypes and ready-made solutions of innovative products and services created by students of the Faculty of Design and Architecture of EKA and Design & Technology Futures (TalTech and EKA joint curriculum) for companies and organizations such as PERH, Tuul, Naturewear, Harmet, moomoo, Kidsmed and others will be presented.

A total of 16 recent cooperation projects from medicine to modular houses and from footwear to bicycle clothing will be presented. The winner of the Viru x EKA Young Design Export Program prize will also be announced.

We look forward to hearing from all current and future cooperation partners of EKA and those interested in future design!

PROGRAMME

14.00 Opening remarks, Mart Kalm, Rector of EKA

14.05 Inspirational speaker – “Healthcare and design”, Siiri Heinaru, Research and Development Service Specialist, North Estonia Medical Centre.

14.15 – 15.45 Presentations of EKA collaboration projects, moderator Kristjan Mändmaa:

1. Naturewear OÜ and EKA accessory design – Product development and material research for brand KIRA;
2. Comodule OÜ and EKA product design with accessory design – During the hackathon, students created ideas for the electric scooter Tuul;
3. Disaintekstiil OÜ and EKA graphic design – Cycling clothing designs for the local cycling clothing brand moomoo;
4. Rasman OÜ, Harmet OÜ and EKA architecture and urban planning – 5) Modular houses: Etnika modular bungalow, modular Estonian country house and modular apartment building.
5. EKA interaction design – (Eng);
6. Interaction design of North Estonia Medical Centre and EKA – Social innovation design (Eng);
7. Kidsmed OÜ and EKA industrial product – Mesh technology based inhaler for children;
8. EKA Industrial Product, Henri-Kaarel Luht – The concept of reusable packaging.

15.45 – 15.50 Winner of Viru x EKA Young Design Export Program will be announced.

Kristel Sooaru, Head of Marketing and Communication at Viru Center, and Piret Puppart, Head of Fashion Design at EKA.

15.50 – 16.00 Break

16.00 – 17.10 Project presentations of the joint curriculum of EKA and TalTech Future of Design and Technology, moderator Martin Pärn:

1. North Estonia Medical Centre, Bariatrics
2. North Estonia Medical Centre, Orthopedics. KOOS – Arthritis Patient Support Network. KOOS is a network for arthritis patients that helps them explore the best strategies to treat their symptoms.
3. North Estonia Medical Centre, Pulmonology. BRIIS
4. North Estonia Medical Centre, Cardiology

17.10 – 17.20 Break

17.20 – 18.30 Project presentations of the joint curriculum of EKA and TalTech Future of Design and Technology, moderator Martin Pärn:

1. Unoloop: is a system that promotes package free consumption while supporting minimalist lifestyle. It helps to create a cleaner home and a cleaner planet.
2. Peridot: Companies provide not only necessities like toilet paper, but also coffee and food for their employees. Why not period products?
3. Teaching the habit of giving and receiving: Every pupil at school has insecurities, be it the loner or the popular one. We are proposing a game for schools that teaches kids to empower their individuality through doing good to others and receiving good done by others.
4. Team Hub: The nature of today’s office work is collaborative and based on shared open space principles. Team Hub will address how to support teamwork in the office, when employees require more flexibility and quicker adaptation to work flow in co-creating spaces.

The event will be funded by European Union Regional Fund

EKA Design Showcase 2021 on Facebook

On December 17th at 5-7PM “Storytelling as a Survival Kit” will be opened at Vent Space. The project is a common ground for narratives derived from the Maria Kapajeva led course “Storytelling in Visual language” at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Stories are passed on from generation to generation and have been so since the existence of humankind through various narrative methods. As a survival kit, ‘storytelling’ takes a different shape and is varied according to the situation it needs to struggle in. From a lichen’s or fox’s folktale, from a life of shadows to an inclusive conversation, one story leads to another. Any way, for any story to survive, it needs to be told. This exhibition presents the young artists’ attempts to find new approaches for seeking, developing, and narrating through their practice.

Exhibiting artists: Áron Tihanyi, Birna Sísí Jóhannsdóttir, Camilla Kulmala, Gregor Pankert, Janosh Heydorn, Jonas Morgenthaler, Julia Tyszka, Kamilé Vasiliauskaitė, Keawalee Warutkomain, Robin Isenmann, Stuti Bansal.

Master of Contemporary Art (MACA) programme invites prospective MA students to join the Online Open House on Wednesday, February 3, 2021 at 17:00 (GMT+2).

This online info session will be a good opportunity to hear more about the programme, and to meet and ask questions directly from people behind MACA. The open house event will be hosted online over Zoom.

If you would like to attend, please register online through the form below. A link to attend will be e-mailed shortly before the event begins.

REGISTER HERE

“INSULA NUDUS: Paljassaare beyond interesting” is a public exhibition and a final grading of Estonian Academy of Arts Urban Studies Urbanisation studio, tutored by Andra Aaloe and Keiti Kljavin.

You are interesting, paljassaare is interesting, everything there is so interesting – it’s romantic, it’s so natural, it’s also hip and so unexplored and under cover; it takes you to the wild side, it takes you to a free and wild space; wow, it’s just so interesting! It’s full of opportunities and potential, so interesting!

“Interesting” seems to be a widely shared, dominating quality when it comes to the Paljassaare peninsula. Nature, wilderness, tranquility, decay, an escape – and all of this located in the capital city itself. But what actually constitutes this “interesting”? What lies beyond that?

On Saturday (12 Dec 2020) starting from 11am everyone is welcome to visit six different individual exhibits located all around the peninsula. You are welcome to explore them in your preferred order and with your individually chosen means of transport, but do mark that sites are open on different time slots (see the programme below).

All the sites are marked here: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit….

Everyone is welcome to gather around the finissage-bonfire of the event at 4pm next to the  (at the meadow next to the tower with a bird mural on the facade: https://goo.gl/maps/cH6Ve3uZhxpU8uif9).

Be prepared for frosty temperatures, bring along some snacks, drinks and everything you need for a lengthy, wintery expedition in the bushes. Refreshments will also be served at some of the locations to keep you going, so don’t forget to bring a mug.

The mini-festival of Paljassaare is put together by Janosh Heydorn, Daria Khrystych, Dalma Pszota, Mira Samonig, Karlotta Sperling and Fernanda Torres.

And we thank you for the help along the way: Flo Kasearu, Abraham Kenny, Simona Medolago, Maros Krivy, Muhammad Ali Ul Hussnain, Lera Mikhailova, Andres Ojari, Panu Lehtovuori, Kille Alterman, Yuriy, Sergey, Natalia, Aleksey.

PROGRAMME

NB! Find the exact locations here:
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit….

11.00–13.00 (Paagi 8) // Right to the social retreat / participatory intervention by Daria Khrystych
What is social about social services and social housing? Official social welfare network is supposed to grant people with financial or social problems a way to still remain in society through assistance and support. In the perception of “functional” members of society, it is a fringe, an edge of the society in large that the “clients” of these facilities are pushed to. But what happens if we’d turn it over and look at the social house as a social retreat, something that we all need from time to time? The participatory intervention “Right to the social retreat” is an attempt to bring the edge (Paljassaare and its “social village”) to be the new and needed centre of the city by broadening the general perceptions of the “social services”.

11.30–13.00 (recycling yard area at Paljassaare tee 17) // “We should do something here!” Vol. 1 / audio adventure by Karlotta Sperling
Change is ahead and the future of Paljassaare seems to be mapped out and already fixed in a seemingly endless number of high-polished detail plans and real estate fantasies. But how does culture influence the anticipated change and what do I have to do with it? And finally, can a plan predict the future?

13.30–15.00 (entrance to the Paljassaare tee 40 area) // “We should do something here!” Vol. 2 / audio adventure by Karlotta Sperling
The series of “We should do something here” continues! Same topic, different location! Adventure is on!

12.00–14.00 (on top of Kopli hill at Maleva 4) // ARCO-BAY/ECO-SANTI: 50 years of eco-cities / audio walk by Fernanda Ayala Torres

Cities are not designed in coherence with nature, as potential places for human cohabitation with other organisms, because originally the city was to free humans from the contingency and wilderness of nature. But now, in the urbanised world and in the face of the pending climate crisis, the way we’re relegated to live in millions of little cubes separated only by roads and parking lots and cars makes us rethink the way we live and consume. From here the ambiguous and ambitious idea of an “eco-city” appears, this 50 years old concept, which aims to integrate the urban into ecology or/and vice versa. The audio walk “ARCO-BAY/ECO-SANTI: 50 years of eco-cities” is questioning the future paper-development of Ecobay in Paljassaare by drawing comparisons to another very different realisation of an eco-city: Arcosanti, an urban laboratory located in Arizona, US.

12.30–14.30 (Westernmost battery of Rannakaitsepatarei nr 12) // Out of control: Playing in the cabinet of curiosities of Paljassaare / installation by Dalma Pszota

The surrounding objects and our built environment define us just as much as the ideology we construct when trying to systematize the world. But who has the power and the privilege to decide our future? With the fragments of the Cabinet of Curiosities for the Anthropocene and the (Collage) City, this installation urges us to find a new order to things and reconfigure our role in an ever-accelerating neoliberal reality in the context of Paljassaare.

13.00–15.00 (Paljassaare linnuvaatlustorn/bird tower) // Watching birds from above / installation/intervention by Janosh Heydorn

Conservation areas such as the Paljassaare hoiuala are humanity’s desperate attempts to slow down the extermination of bird species, powered by the exploitation of natural resources and so-called planetary urbanisation. Inspired by Donna Haraway’s thoughts about natureculture, the installation in the bird watchtower questions the precarious understanding of nature and culture as separate entities. By extending bodily senses through the perspective of a drone the work invites us to reflect on our position on Earth somewhere between being an animal and a machine.

13.30–15.30 (ruin next to the wooden walk path) // The urban wild is—everywhere to be felt—nowhere to be noticed / performance and spatial experience by Mira Samonig
A continuously flowing magnitude; from departed to intended, from not-anymore to not-yet, from memory to anticipation, from past to future. The conceptualized circle of time drags one back and forth, to an extent that the actual present existence seems to fade away in space. This performance invites to question the matter of concrete materiality. The terrain vague of Paljassaare acts as an exploratory space to research theory with one’s own matter, the body.

Facebook event

EKA Animation MA programme is hosting an online Open House event on the 14th January 2021.

The Department of Animation invites prospective MA students to join the programme’s Online Open House on Thursday, 14th of January 2021 at 17:00 (GMT+2). This will be a good opportunity to hear more about the programme, and to meet and ask questions from the people behind the programme. The event will be hosted online via Zoom.

If you would like to attend, please register using the form below. A link to attend will be e-mailed shortly before the event begins.

STRUCTURE OF THE SESSION

1. Introduction of EKA Animation MA programme (professor Priit Tender, Head of the Animation Department)
2. Overview of workshops, special events and spread of our student works (Mari Kivi, Coordinator of Projects at the Animation Department)
3. Quick virtual tour in the department
4. Students share their experience + quick tour in Niine studio (Sophia Bazalgette ja Camilla Yencken)
5. Q&A session

(Registration is closed)

Video HERE

On Monday, 14 December at 16.00, pre-reviewing of Art and Design programme PhD student Britta Benno’s exhibition „ Ruinenlust: Lasnamägi” will take place at Hobusepea Gallery (and via Zoom). Exhibition is part of the artistic (practice-based) doctoral thesis of Britta Benno.

Audience is welcome to join via Zoom. Link HERE

The exhibition is open until 14 December, 2020.

Supervisor: Dr. Elnara Taidre
Pre-reviewers of the exhibition: Dr. Elo-Hanna Seljamaa, Andreas Trossek

When waking up from a lunch-time nap, it had transformed to a gigantic future dinosaur that no one had ever seen before. One can imagine the soaked bulks of houses thrown on a hillocky landscape behind the fog. These are the ruins of concrete panel houses that have luckily survived in a spot that once was called Lasnamäe.

The cuboids had no windows nor doors, darkness smirked its toothless grin behind the cavities. And yet, there was no emptiness there – new life had moved in Lasnamäe. Creatures like the dinosaur were living there – huge, miraculous animals whose ancestors originated from the Anthropocene.

Ruinenlust in Lasnamäe is a science fictional prospective to post-human urban landscape where jungle and mountaneous terrain with the future creatures have taken over the ruins of a former bedroom community. Pleasure of looking at the ruins, Ruinenlust, is projected to the district of Lasnamäe that has lost the heavy burden of meanings. The message has been expressed through the models of houses characteristic to Lasnamäe have been used in puppet animation as well as the etching drawings that look like findings from an ancient civilisation.

Marginal and old-time arts, printmaking and stereoscopic puppet animation accompanied by harpsichord music form a staged installation. Concern about the dystopian state of our environment motivates to imagine the post-human future. Hybrid art and layered combination becomes the tool of such imagination and depiction.

Current exhibition also serves as Britta Benno’s second peer-reviewed creative output of her studies in the Doctoral School at the Estonian Academy of Arts. In her artistic research, Benno concentrates on depicting science fictional landscape in the extended field of drawing and printmaking.

Britta Benno (b. 1984) is an artist mainly working with drawing and printmaking, she lives and works in Tallinn. She is intrigued by various hybrid techniques and materials as well as the new perspectives that start to emerge when juxtapose and combine the abovementioned techniques and materials. Benno’s exhibitions of the past few years function as a series while depicting post-human urban landscapes. Conceptual keywords are: memory, power, fugacity of meanings (ruins), visualisation (worlding), mental tools of a graphic artist (layered thinking) and posthumanist philosophy.

Benno’s last pop-up exhibition Of Becoming a Shape of a Land(Scape) was completed during a residency in Iceland and was opened for a few days in Outver gallery, Iceland. In Tallinn the same exhibition project, titled as Once I Had, was held together with Heather Beardsley in Kraam Project Room in the autumn of 2019. The most prominent personal exhibition Dystopic Tallinn was open in Tallinn Art Hall gallery in the summer of 2019.

The artist expresses her gratitude to: Ragnar Neljandi (cameraman, animator, post-production), Heigo Eeriksoo (puppet master), Mait Eerik (prop master), Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Nukufilm LLC.
Exhibitions in Hobusepea gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia,

Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko Ltd.

EKA Graphic Design MA programme is hosting online Open House event on 30th November 2020.

We invite prospective students to join our Open House on Monday, 30 November 2020, 17:00h. This will be an opportunity to hear more about the program, and to meet and ask questions directly from the faculty.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the open house will be hosted online over zoom. If you would like to attend, please register online through the form below. A link to attend will be e-mailed shortly before the event begins.

REGISTER HERE

Open lecture by Jonathan Keep ‘10 Years of Extrusion Clay Printing’ on EKA TV.

Jonathan Keep, a pioneer in clay 3D printing, will talk about his experience in the field of printing over the past ten years, starting at 1 PM on Thursday, November 26th. 

He began working as a ceramicist in South Africa 30 years ago. He has lived and worked in Suffolk, England since 1986.

Jonathan Keep started working in digital technology at the turn of the century, during his master’s studies at the Royal College of Art. From there on he became interested in the possibilities of clay 3D printing, which was realized in a delta printer built in cooperation with the Belgian design studio Unfold. Since then, he has worked and shared his experience in the field of clay 3D printing in many countries, also via the web.

The first half of the lecture at EKA covers what he has learned on the subject in his travels over the last 10 years.

The second half is more technical as he talks about what he has learned about machines and about extrusion clay printing. In this second part he describes some quite detailed research he has done into the characteristics of different clays when used for printing and research into layer height, nozzle size, clay consistency and printing speed.

The lecture can be rewatched on EKA TV till the end of Thursday.

Organizer: prof Urmas Puhkan, Department of Ceramics