EKA Winter School, 15-19 of January (4 ECTS)
The 2018 Winter School of the Estonian Academy of Arts invites for a reflection on the place buildings occupy in peoples’ biographies by studying the transformations of built forms and its correlation with individual subjectivities and societal changes at large. Specifically, the objective of the event is to explore the possibilities to correlate personal maturing and the life states of buildings and provide new tools, concepts and frameworks for understanding the plural life stages of the built environment.
A key proposition behind this Winter School is that comparisons can be drawn between the biographies of persons and the biographies of buildings, yet perhaps the metaphor of biography highlights a too linear process of change, instead of the eventful discontinuation and change of states they might go through.
The programme is set up to reconsider the birth, death, and reconstitution of the built environment by paying attention to the different relations that emerge between buildings and people. The event will consist of lectures, workshops and artists talks, including a keynote and four excursions. Some possible lines of thought addressed by papers may be:
- What are the recognised stages of a building’s life?
- Can we use human metaphors to study the built environment?
- In which ways do buildings store personal memories and social significance?
- What discrete activities are engendered to maintain buildings alive?
- When or what is the ultimate no-return point that marks the death of buildings and their functional discontinuation?
Organiser: Francisco Martínez
Invited scholars: Tomás Errázuriz (Andrés Bello, Chile); Andres Kurg (EKA); Patrick Laviolette (Tallinn Univ.), Michał Murawski (Queen Mary Univ. of London); Tomás Sánchez Criado (Munich Center for Technology in Society)
Artists, designers & architects: Andra Aaloe; Flo Kasearu; Paul Kuimet; Laura Kuusk; Karli Luik; Triin Ojari; Margit Säde; Ingel Vaikla and Tüüne-Kristin Vaikla.
Programme
15th, Monday (Suur Kloostri 11, Interior Design Dept.)
10:30 Introduction and lecture by F. Martínez, Architectural Taxidermy
11:45 Seminar by P. Kuimet
14:00 Seminar by L. Kuusk
15:00 Lecture by T. Errázuriz, When new is not better: the making of home through holding on to objects
16:00 Seminar by T.K. Vaikla, How long is the life of a building? Screening the film ‘The House Guard’ (I. Vaikla, 2014),
17:00 Excursion to the F. Kasearu Museum.
16th, Tuesday (Suur Kloostri 11, Interior Design Dept.)
10:30 Students’ Seminar.
14:00 Excursion to the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design.
16:00 Excursion: Sense of Domesticity by A. Aaloe & M. Säde.
17th, Wednesday Independent research by the students, preparing their own work on the biographical correlation between people and buildings / the built space.
18th, Thursday (Suur Kloostri 11, Room 103, Art History Dept.)
10:00 Keynote Lecture by M. Murawski, People make buildings (and buildings make people), but not under conditions of their own choosing. Chair, A. Kurg.
12:00 Round table about the life stages of buildings with T. K. Vaikla, K. Luik, T. Ojari, A. Kurg, and M. Murawski.
14:00 Independent research by the students
19th, Friday (Suur Kloostri 11, Interior Design Dept.)
10:30 Lecture by T. Sánchez Criado, Technologies of friendship? Open design objects and their figurations of relatedness.
12:00 Lecture by P. Laviolette, Buildings A-live
14:30 Presentations by students.
Practical information about the Winter School:
The programme is designed for MA students in architecture, urban studies, and interior design (max 20). Upon full participation, students will be awarded 4 ECTS points. The working language of the workshop is English.