The nostalgic image of an architecture office full of drawing boards and rapidographs is alien to the generation born after the restoration of Estonian independence. We began our architecture studies by acquiring basic computer skills and then boldly plunged into the world of 2D and 3D, visualisation and BIM design.
These days, to be is to be connected. Electricity, heat, road and street networks, internet connections, and water supply—it is as if all these intersecting and sometimes overlapping networks have become basic human rights. If these networks function well, our dependence on them goes unnoticed—we rarely take a moment to acknowledge the energy that travels across the sky, through underground and underwater pipelines, through wall cables, into millions of devices. On the other hand, when something disrupts the functioning of these networks, be it military aggression by a tyrannical neighbour, a sharp rise in prices, or catastrophic weather events, the political, economic, ethical, and often also spatial dimensions of these structures suddenly become apparent.
Any kind of construction must be stopped. Based on her Master’s thesis ‘30 Years of Pause. Research about doing not’ that she defended at the Eesti Kunstiakadeemia / Estonian Academy of Arts in 2021, Ulla Alla asks, "Is it enough already?"
