Design Potential in Infrastructure

Antoine Picon is the G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and chair of the PhD program in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning. In addition to his activities in Boston, he is closely connected to Tallinn and the Estonian Academy of Arts, where Antoine Picon supervises PhD students and advises the Faculty of Architecture. Recently, the university awarded him an honorary doctoral degree—Doctor Honoris Causa—for your achievements and support.

Sea Tram

A decade ago, the city of Tallinn organised an idea competition for innovative solutions. The sea tram idea earned a prize and a place on Tallinn’s roadmap of innovative ideas. Its author, Villem Tomiste, sketches the opportunities arising from this potential infrastructure.

Nature vs Infrastructure

Me oleme loonud tohutud süsteemid ja võrgustikud – globaalne majandus, õigus, transport, energeetika, toit –, mida tehnosfääri masinavärk töös hoiab. Taristus on ilmselged struktuursed vead, mis koormavad meie planeeti ning mida üritatakse nn rohepoliitikaga lappida.

MAJA 2-2025 (120): Concrete

Where is the line between genuine development and pointless construction? How to use concrete reasonably rather than wastefully? In what form should concrete figure in contemporary architecture?

Later Living Here and Elsewhere

In 2016, a group of women moved into a building in the borough of Barnet on the outskirts of London—a building that had been developed and built in collaboration with them and specially for them. Thus culminated a process that had begun in 1998, when some of these women founded the Older Women’s Co-Housing (OWCH) group.

Pension Pillars

But how do these pillars grow anyway? Where should you move the sum that you have collected so that it could at the very least keep up with the inflation? And what role are these savings of mine currently playing in world affairs?