Unfinished City’s 2nd semester research is now available for reading and downloading online.
At this stage, the work has focused on the issues of urban structure and density, but inevitably also looks at urban planning issues more broadly. The focus of the work is Lasnamägi, as a radical change in historical urban planning and a great modernist promise of a brighter future for the broad masses. The living environment aimed at the abstract average person was made widely available by a panel construction based on extreme simplification and repetition. Almost half of Tallinn’s population lives in such an environment if we combine Lasnamäe, Mustamäe and Õismäe. The share of low-rise residential buildings with modern panel design and low-cost panel houses is significant in a very large part of the world’s cities. Now that the time of rapid growth and expansion of cities in Estonia and the developed world at large is over, at least for a while, it is necessary to find a new identity and ambition for the future for panel housing districts that have emerged from the model of extensive growth.
The main organizers of the work have been prof. Andres Alver and prof. Toomas Tammis from the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning of EKA and prof. Andres Sevtsuk from Harvard University. During the autumn semester, 4th year students of architecture and urban planning at EKA and Master’s students of urban planning from Harvard University were also involved in the work. Damiano Cerrone, Doctoral Student of the Department of Architecture of EKA, is also involved in the research of reading research data and the use of social media in panel house districts.