Hannes Aava shares some subjective tidbits about the last 30 years of spatial design in the Baltics.
Francisco Martínez's and Joosep Kivimäe's inventory of spatial objects in Narva, a city on the Estonian border with Russia.
Simply removing the ‘foreign’ symbols offers no more than an ostensible solution, for dissonant heritage—a complex and controversial past, conflicting historical interpretations, etc.—need to be dealt with in a much more in-depth manner.
On the backdrop of successful energy efficiency renovations, one can also notice two worrying trends—residents moving out either due to a lack of renovation, or due to renovation.
In talking to Rein Einasto, interdisciplinarity shows itself to be something more than calculated collaboration between experts of different fields. It has a cultural rather than project-based meaning, consisting of commonly shared social responsibility, making sense of collective action, or, to use Einasto’s own expression, being in a common spirit.
When I heard the news that there is now a lift in St. Nicholas’ (Niguliste) Church, I immediately thought of the famous Santa Justa Lift in Lisbon, designed by Raoul Mesnier du Ponsard, a student of Gustave Eiffel. On second thought, the type of lift in St. Nicholas’ is a bit different, of course, for the Santa Justa Lift connects two levels of a city built on seven hills while also functioning as a viewing platform and tourist attraction. Something similar to the latter was planned in Tallinn for the area between the so-called Roe Deer Park on Nunne Street and Toompea viewing platform by architect Herbert Johanson in 1935. Likewise, there were attempts—already in the 1920s, then in the 1950s, and for the third time in the 1990s—to draw up a lift (more specifically, a chair lift) for the Patkuli stairway zone. And yet, still no chair lift!
Mustjala care home and day centre was meant to be a pilot project for a standard design in Saaremaa. There is a shortage of care home places and the same kind of building was planned right away for Leisi too. While initially it was feared that life in such a care home would be too expensive, today we see that monthly bills for the residents do not exceed 300 euros.
‘… when humanists accuse people of “treating humans like objects”, they are thoroughly unaware that they are treating objects unfairly.’ Bruno Latour
The term ‘accessibility’ marks everyone’s involvement in the living and informational environment, regardless of their age or health, by ensuring equal opportunities for everyone’s participation in the society. The topic is increasingly discussed both on the national and municipal level, and work to improve accessibility is also ongoing in cultural institutions, including museums, which this article will be focusing on.
In the end of April, I was contacted by an old acquaintance who usually shops at Szolnok supermarket. According to his description of the situation, all the cashiers had been laid off and you can now pay only at self-checkouts. Since Rimi also saves on having a consultant or helper present, many older people feel extremely uncomfortable, not to say humiliated.
Jakob D’herde explores homemaking in one’s later life by drawing upon the findings of his socio-spatial doctoral research project ‘Living (at) Home: On Older People’s Making of Home and Dignity’. He argues that homemaking is a continuous negotiation process between a dwelling and a person’s image of home. When this negotiation is successful, the home and dwelling can be conflated into what he calls the househome.
How should we understand age? Or old age? In some cases, it is perceived as a value—something good, like in wines that improve over time. Old cities and old works of architecture likewise comprise a number of values that new-made ones can lack, and even in people, it is generally taken to be a positive thing that they become wiser, more mature, and more experienced with age.
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If there is any feeling of blandness, or risk aversion, or scant sense of place, it is not due to insufficient bike lanes or pedestrian squares, but rather because the larger questions of what is produced and who gets to have how much have already been decided.
Planning in Norway is strongly guided by strategic approaches and broad state-set goals directing the local level. This is also reflected in the management and development of local cultural heritage. Vignir Freyr Helgason, senior advisor at the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage (Riksantikvaren) gives an overview of how strategies are developed and implemented in collaboration between the state, municipalities and communities.
The story of the completion of Reiniku School stadium building financed by EU through Osirys project is almost as complex and thrilling as the mythological tale of the god of resurrection and transformation Osiris.
Limestone in Estonian Construction and Architecture in the 20th Century.
Kaija-Luisa Kurik gives an overview of the results of a 30-months-long partnership project between the Estonian National Heritage Board and the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage, titled ‘Historic Town Centres Revitalised Through Heritage-Based Local Development’, and tries to decipher the increasingly close connections between heritage preservation, urban studies, and sustainable development.
The capital of Germany is a maze of rules where imagination flourishes in the underwood. Although Berlin may come across as the capital of tolerance due to the various forms of diversity, it also has its controversies.
Ülemiste City has in the past 15 years evolved from industrial urban fringe to international smart city district. We inquired from the developers about the problems they are tackling in Ülemiste district and how they are assisted by science and technology in solving them.
Jurga Daubaraitė, Egija Inzule and Jonas Žukauskas initiated Neringa Forest Architecture in Nida, Lithuania. They write about their work around a Baltic forest as a constructed space, an infrastructure, an environment reliant on human actions.
Improving the architectural quality of the existing housing stock requires integrating engineering solutions with architectural decisions. In the ongoing renovation marathon, it is important to discuss what kind of added value could be drawn from the existing to unleash the full spatial potential of renovation and to create good user-friendly spaces, writes Diana Drobot.
The Danish architect Mette Johanne Hübschmann analyses the domestic interiors of similarly speculative housing development from a feminist standpoint.