ARCHITECTURE
For the current article, I spoke with two architect and interior architect tandems whose cooperation has become their preferred form of creative effort: Kalle Vellevoog and Tiiu Truus as well as Mihkel Tüür, Ott Kadarik and Kadri Tamme.
Little was built following the re-establishment of Estonian independence in the early 1990s, however, the debates held and practices established largely came to set the foundations for the dominant issues in the architectural field in the past decades.
The stories we have heard ever since the beginning of the century about the merchandising of museums and the transformation of all culture into an unending festival are greatly exaggerated. The new cultural buildings are good examples of state-commissioned public spaces that are quite self-aware with no desire to go along with the general trends of commercialisation.
We are discussing landscape architecture with Helēna Gūtmane, Mark Geldof and Ilze Rukšāne online although I initially planned to go there and visit their works together with the authors. In addition to Helēna, Ilze and Mark, also the senior landscape architects Indra Ozoliņa, Mētra Augškāpa and landscape architect Sendija Adītāja joined our discussion around the table (and behind the screen).
How did a landmark in wooden architecture—the largest public wooden building in Estonia—come to be?
One of the most important traits in the 21st century is considered to be creativity. What kinds of spaces set the cornerstone for a creative personality? Let us examine the interiors and exteriors of Raja Kindergarten in Pärnu.
A building may use its own words to speak its own truth, despite the utterings of the system it belongs to. As such, a building may also be quite quiet, in a pleasant way. Calm and unintrusive.
Each public competition and design carries in itself both potential and responsibility to make a contribution to the spatial environment surrounding the building.
The buildings of Barge Yard wish not to reduce to inconspicuousness or to gently stroke the viewer’s gaze; they have a much broader agenda—to stand behind creative values even after solving the maze of practical questions.
Rather than exhibiting objects and asking questions, the contemporary museum has become a place for experiences requiring submission to the logic of storytelling. Triin Ojari considers how the reconstructed Narva Castle relates to history and providing experiences.
