ARHITEKTUUR
The pilgrims’ house and theme park give an overview of the medieval pilgrimage traditions and provide various attractions but fail to discuss the deeper layers related with travelling that the architecture of the building has considerable potential for.
‘We had completed our design submission for an architectural design competition. The detailed plan determined the building’s shape, roof pitch, roof height, eave height, the choice of building materials, entrance to the lot, the parking space of its residents and the client also provided us with a specific layout for rooms. We thought we had quite a decent building. Then an architecture student appeared and asked: ‘Well, what is the concept of this building...?’’
In recent years, environmentally sensitive apartment buildings have been constructed in Tartu city centre that timidly yet vigorously test the boundaries of the current way of life.
The urban festival UIT was looking for installations that would correspond to the main theme of the festival “An Encounter with a Stranger”. We were interested in strangeness as a feeling or phenomenon and we mainly focussed on the creation of an atmosphere rather than a meeting place.
The centre dedicated to the composer Arvo Pärt is loaded with many different expectations which set very high standards for the architecture. A successful architectural space not only provides a particular set of facilities, but also functions as an abstract machine, a means to contemplate our place in grander schemes of things.
Strict special conditions set by the National Heritage Board have ensured excellent renovation results but not the thunderbolt contemporary solution on a par with the original.
I am certain that, if we had had to go through the procedure of preparing a detailed plan, we would not have achieved a comparable result. The more time-consuming procedure would probably have yielded a ‘heftier’ solution in terms of urban development as a compensation for the profits lost by undeveloped property. At any rate, the future would have arrived several years later.
I have failed to notice, in all those nostalgic reminiscences about the old Baltic Station market, has anyone shown any interest in whether the sellers themselves actually enjoyed spending time in this environment?
The Estonian National Museum’s own home was completed thanks to three very simple underpinnings: belief, trust and cooperation.
Now, as the process of the rough diamond becoming an alluring (architectural) gem is complete, it is time to explore the fine cuts made to achieve it. We discuss the project through three generic terms: vocabulary – defining the key terms for the building, urban – contextualising it in micro- and macro-scales, and internal – from the interior ambitions to domestic relationships.
