Events

On January 25, 2024, the EKA Design Showcase gala will present to the audience the best cooperation projects of EKA students from the last year with companies and public sector organizations.

We are waiting for all current and future cooperation partners of EKA and those interested in future design to take part in the event!

REGISTRATION

Concepts, prototypes and ready-made solutions of innovative products and services created by students of the Faculty of Design of EKA during the last year for companies and organizations such as the Estonian National Library, Estonian Prison Service (Ministry of Justice), Antonius ÕU (Tartu Creative Economy Center), Eesti Energia, Pagulasabi MTÜ, Cignomet OÜ, Liven AS, GraceFit, Swedbank, Xarus Cosmetics OÜ, Integration SA (Ministry of Culture) and PERH will be presented.

The most influential and innovative projects will also receive awards!

These are projects created within the framework of the new business cooperation program LAETUS of the EKA Faculty of Design.

EKA has accumulated a very strong wealth of experience in carrying out cooperation projects over the years, and the LAETUS program, launched in 2022, has further expanded this field of activity. The program brings together EKA’s design field courses and business challenges of companies, offering synergy and fruitful cooperation, resulting in sustainable research and development projects that move all parties forward.

Come to the Design Showcase and get new knowledge and inspiration on how to take your organization’s products or services to the next level with the help of new generation design and open innovation in cooperation with EKA!

THE PROGRAM

15:00 EKA house tour for those interested (pre-registration required)

16:00 Start
Welcome words by moderator Jan Teevet and dean of EKA’s Faculty of Design Ruth-Helene Melioranski.

16:15-17:30 Presentations of cooperation projects

“Service Design Sprint with Real Life Challenges in Tallinn’s Biggest Hospital” – MA students of social design and service design and PERH

“Personal City – Let’s Walk!” – MA students of social design and Integration SA (Ministry of Culture)

“How to Become President?” – MA students of social design and Integration SA (Ministry of Culture)

“What Happens when a Schoolchild gets to the National Library?” – interaction design MA students and the Estonian National Library

“Nuclear Energy Experience in 2035” – MA students of interaction design and Eesti Energia

“Making Estonia a Stepping Stone” – MA students of interaction design and Pagulasabi NGO

Sustainable Natural Cosmetics Brand Concepts “PIXEL” and “æsce” – BA students of design and innovation and Xarus Cosmetics OÜ

17:20-17:45 Coffee break

17:45-18:50 Presentations of cooperation projects

“Giving Agency to Prison Inmates by Establishing Digital Communication in Tallinn Prison” – Design & Technology Futures MA students and Prison Service (Ministry of Justice)

“Empowering your fitness journey on GraceFit” – MA interaction design students and GraceFit

“National Library Service System to Support Adults with Dyslexia” – BA students in digital product design and the Estonian National Library

“Onboarding for Swedbank Based on Design Thinking” – BA students of digital product design and Swedbank

“Modular Storage of Electric Bicycles for Public Space and Apartment Associations” – BA students of industrial design and Cignomet OÜ

“Small forms of the Outdoor area of the New Residential Quarter” – BA students of design and innovation and Liven AS

“Rebranding of Antonius Õu Located in Tartu’s Historic Jaani Quarter” – BA students of design and innovation and Antonius ÕU (Tartu Creative Economy Center)

18:50 Acknowledgments and presentation of awards

19:00 The End

Presentations will be held in Estonian or English, without translation.

It is possible to participate both on site at EKA (room A101) and watch the broadcast http://tv.artun.ee/ .

We look forward to hearing from all current and future cooperation partners of EKA and those interested in future design!

Watch a video reminder of last year’s event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykpI2Jevyn0

Additional information:
Karin Kiigemägi
EKA Business Relations and Project Coordinator karin.kiigemagi@artun.ee

The EKA Design Showcase gala, now in its seventh year, once again presents the best EKA students’ collaborative projects with companies and public sector organisations from the past year on 25 January 2024. We invite all current and future partners of EKA and all those interested in future design to attend the event!

REGISTRATION

Concepts, prototypes and ready-to-use solutions of innovative products and services created by EKA’s design students over the past year for companies and organisations such as the National Library of Estonia, Estonian Prison Service (Ministry of Justice), Antoniuse ÕU (Tartu Centre for Creative Industries), Eesti Energia, Estonian Refugee Council, Cignomet OÜ, Liven AS, GraceFit, Swedbank, Xarus Cosmetics OÜ, Integration Foundation (Ministry of Culture) and PERH (North Estonia Medical Centre) will be presented. There are prizes for the most influential and innovative projects!

These projects were created in the framework of EKA Faculty of Design’s new business cooperation programme LAETUS. Over the years, the Estonian Academy of Arts has accumulated a lot of experience in conducting collaborative projects and the LAETUS cooperation programme, launched in 2022, has further expanded this field of activity. The programme brings together EKA’s design courses and the business-related challenges of companies, providing synergies and fruitful collaboration and resulting in sustainable research and development projects that move all parties forward.

Come to the Design Showcase and gain new insights and inspiration on how to take your organisation’s products or services to the next level through a new generation of design and open innovation in partnership with EKA!

PROGRAMME

15:00 EKA building tour for those interested (pre-registration required)

16:00 EKA Design Showcase Gala starts. Welcoming words by moderator Jan Teevet and EKA’s Dean of the Faculty of Design Ruth-Helene Melioranski

16:15-17:30 Presentations of collaborative projects

• Service Design Sprint with Real Life Challenges in Tallinn’s Biggest Hospital – MA students in Social Design and Service Design and PERH

• Personal City – Let’s Walk! – students of MA Social Design and the Integration Foundation (Ministry of Culture)

• How to Become President – students of MA Social Design and the Integration Foundation (Ministry of Culture)

• Nuclear Energy Experience in 2035 – students of MA Interaction Design and Eesti Energia

• Making Estonia a Stepping Stone – students of MA Interaction Design and the Estonian Refugee Council

• Re-Branding of Antoniuse ÕU in Tartu’s Historic Jaani Quarter – students of BA Design and Innovation and Antoniuse ÕU (Tartu Centre for Creative Industries)

• Small Forms in the Courtyard of a New Residential Quarter – students of BA Design and Innovation and Liven AS

17:30-18:00 Coffee break

18:00-19:20 Presentations of collaborative projects

• Giving Agency to Prison Inmates by Establishing Digital Communication in Tallinn Prison – students of MA Design & Technology Futures and the Estonian Prison Service (Ministry of Justice)

• Empowering Your Fitness Journey on GraceFit – students of MA Interaction Design and GraceFit

• What Happens When a Schoolchild Arrives at the National Library? – students of MA Interaction Design and the National Library of Estonia

• The National Library’s Service System for Supporting Adults with Dyslexia – students of BA Digital Product Design and the National Library of Estonia

• Modular Storage of Electric Bicycles for Public Spaces and Apartment Associations – students of BA Industrial Design and Cignomet OÜ

• Design Thinking Based Onboarding for Swedbank – students of BA Digital Product Design and Swedbank

• Sustainable natural cosmetics brand concepts PIXEL and æsce – students of BA Design and Innovation and Xarus Cosmetics OÜ

• Helping to Achieve Riga Airport’s Ambition – to Become a Key Player in the Northern European Airport Market – students of Service Design Strategies and Innovations and Riga Airport

19:20 Acknowledgements and awards ceremony

19:30 End

The presentations are in Estonian and English, without translation.

It is possible to participate on-site at EKA (room A101) as well as via webcast http://tv.artun.ee/.

We are welcoming all current and future partners of EKA and those interested in future design to our event!

Watch a video of last year’s event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykpI2Jevyn0

Additional information:

Karin Kiigemägi
EKA Collaboration and Project Coordinator

From its abandoned beaches to the smelly yet indispensable water treatment plant, the hill made from trash, the willfully resistant garage town and its shiny new future plans – everything in Paljassaare seems to be exactly that: an ever-changing sequence of elements, a kaleidoscope.

After researching its abundance of topics, places and processes for one semester, first year Urban Studies students from Estonian Academy of Arts will take their turn and reflect on what they have spotted in that kaleidoscope, in a sequence of creative projects presented on site, in Paljassaare.

The detailed route and more information on each stop can be found on Urban Studies facebook page and Instagram soon!

Within the framework of the Open Lectures Series of the Department of Architecture and Urban Design of EKA, Birgitte Svarre will take the stage in the hall of EKA on 30th November at 6:15 pm with lecture “Public space / public life – an interaction – how to study and make room for it.” She talks about her work studying public life and creating space for it.

The lecture is preceded by public presentation of the book “How to Study Public Life” at 5:30 pm in EKA lobby.

Birgitte Svarre is the co-author of the book “How to Study Public Life”. She has a MA on Modern Culture, a PhD in Architecture and is CEO at BARK, Copenhagen, a consultancy focused on strategic development of places with a focus on both people and places. BARK is owned by the Building Heritage Foundation. Until 2022, Birgitte Svarre has been with Gehl Architects for more than 14 years consulting cities mainly in Northern Europe on human centered planning, public space and public life, including as head of Gehl’s Cities team. She is currently part of the advisory board for lively city centers for the Danish Foundation Realdania.

Architect Jan Gehl is an Adjunct Professor at the Aarhus School of Architecture, Professor (ret.) of Urban Design, The Royal Danish Academy and Founding Partner, Gehl Architects. In 1971 Jan Gehl published the seminal book Life Between Buildings launching a whole new thinking about the design and development of cities. Gehl’s first book and subsequent publications sparked a showdown with the car-centric cities and began mapping and describing people-friendly interventions in the infrastructure of cities. His books include Life Between Buildings, Public Spaces – Public Life, New City Spaces, New City Life, Cities for People.

The open lectures are intended for students and professionals of all disciplines, not just the field of architecture. All lectures take place in the large auditorium of EKA, are in English, free of charge and open to all interested parties. Be there!

Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Department of Architecture and Urban Design of EKA brings to the audience in Tallinn every academic year about a dozen unique practitioners and valued theoreticians of the field. You can watch previous lectures from www.avatudloengud.ee

The lecture series is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

On December 4, EKA Urban Studies students will present the zine “The Cheapest Option”.

Urban Studies students Elena Pusčiūtė, Ishrat Shaheen, Jonas Vyšniauskas, Maria Laura Benduzu Ulluo, Kalina Trajanovska and Kush Badhwar in collaboration with EKA GD students Joao Nogueira and Karthik Palepu release The Cheapest Option, a zine emerging from the semester-long studio Production of Urban Space, guided by Helen Runting and Leonard Ma.

The zine explores how ideas of the non-plan, neoliberalism, markets, cybernetics, and neo-liberal subjects shape our experience of space, explored through forms including city postcards, generic characters, local newspapers, and memes. The event takes place in 501, 5th floor. A limited number of copies of the zines will be available for distribution.

The zine launch will be followed by a presentation from Professor Helena Mattsson on her recent book “Architecture and Retrenchment: Neoliberalization of the Swedish Model across Aesthetics and Space, 1968–1994,” which investigates the relation between architecture and the neoliberalization of the Swedish welfare state.“

Schedule:

In autumn 2023, the open architectural lectures will take place under the title Mobile Masters. The theme brings architects and theorists to Tallinn, who analyse architecture’s flexibility and the mobile practices of architects, spatial designers and artists.

Gregor Taul, the curator of the autumn lectures, introduces the program with the following words: “Architecture stands at a significant crossroads. Ten-year-old buildings are demolished and taken to the landfill. The lifespan of an interior design project is five years at best, if that. These bleak facts do not inspire confidence in a discipline that requires so many resources in light of such a short time perspective. What does ‘better not do anything’ mean for spatial design? What might ‘mobile architecture’ refer to or who is a ‘mobile designer’? How can moving people or things be a positive spatial practice?”

On December 7, Brussels-based Laurens Bekemans and co-founder of Brussels-based BC architects & studies, will be on the EKA main hall stage in Tallinn with the lecture The Act of Building.

BC is BC architects, studies and materials. BC stands for Brussels Cooperation and points to how BC grew – embedded within place and people. Started in 2012 as a hybrid office, BC is manoeuvring the boundaries of architecture in a doers manner. With three different legal entities, the team engages in a variety of experimental projects through which it designs bioregional and circular architecture, researches educational and construction processes and produces new building materials using local waste streams such as excavated earth

Laurens introduces his lecture in the following words:

From the first fieldtrips for the design of a library in Burundi to involving over 150 workshop participants in the construction of a public building in Belgium, these stories tell how BC engages in acts of building. The act of building is act and discourse.It is the complex effort of a temporary association to create an infrastructure of its own. In order to have a positive impact on our society, BC believes that architects need to intervene beyond the narrow definition of the professional who designs and controls the execution of buildings. 

Hence, BC ventures into material production, contracting, storytelling, knowledge transfer, community organization, which all influence BC’s design approach. The act of building has an impact and is at the same time a manifestation of values and ideas, which grew out of a broad network around a specific project. Building has a transformative power, driven by action, narrative and result. The lecture will guide you through key moments and key projects, which helped transform BC into the hybrid practice it is today. 

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The open lectures are intended for students and professionals of all disciplines, not just the field of architecture. All lectures take place in the large auditorium of EKA, are in English, free of charge and open to all interested parties. Be there!

Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Department of Architecture and Urban Design of EKA brings to the audience in Tallinn every academic year about a dozen unique practitioners and valued theoreticians of the field. You can watch lectures from previous years on YouTube or www.avatudloengud.ee

The lecture series is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Curator: Gregor Taul

The department of Interaction Design MA at EKA will contribute to the World Usability Day Estonia (WUD) with a public talk and workshop.

Conference FB event

Nesli Hazal Oktay’s Talk

Tanel Kärp’s Workshop

Conference LinkedIn event

World Usability Day Estonia (WUD) is an annual UX-, web- and interaction design conference, the largest in the Baltics. WUD 2023 topic is Collaboration and Cooperation.

This year’s WUD theme encompasses the essence of effective teamwork and smooth interaction in the realm of User Experience (UX). We aim to shed light on the significance of synergy and collective effort in driving innovation and fostering a cohesive UX community.

The event is in English and this year we will continue with the hybrid format which combines a live event (Kultuurikatel) with an online event.

November 21-23rd – workshop days
November 23rd – pre-event at Tallinn University (Narva mnt 25, Tallinn)
November 24th – conference day – the hybrid format – combines a live event (Kultuurikatel, Põhja puiestee 27a, Tallinn, ESTONIA) with an online event

You can watch the conference till the end of the year 2023!

More information on the event website

#wud2023 #ux #conference

BOOK LAUNCH: Urbanizing Suburbia: Hyper-Gentrification, the Financialization of Housing and the Remaking of the Outer European City

Location: EKA Lobby, Canteen

Time: 21.11.2023 @ 18:00

Urbanizing Suburbia considers three current and related processes underway in global cities: the hyper-gentrification of inner cities, the financialization of housing, and the structural changes occurring in the outer city. Rocketing housing prices have displaced residents from inner cities and created a rent gap in outer cities. Increasingly, municipalities, developers, and displaced residents search for opportunities in the suburban belts. Changes in demographics, densities, live/work ratios, and tenures are remaking outer cities, rendering them less and less suburban. The book examines these changes by looking at four key European cities: Amsterdam, Berlin, London, and Stockholm. It is a first attempt at understanding the three processes discussed here within one comprehensive explanatory framework.

Editors are EKA adjunct staff teaching at the faculty of Architecture Tahl Kaminer, Leonard Ma and Helen Runting.

EKA Prof of Urban Studies Maroš Krivy has contributed in the book with one chapter.

Urbanizing Suburbia is published by JOVIS (De Gruyter) and the publication is supported by EKA. EKA urban studies students have been part of collecting materials for the book.

The presentation will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Kaja Pae. 

It is possible to buy the book at the presentation.

“The Life and Death”

Miradonna Sirkka and Sofi Häkkinen have worked together for 8 years – and counting. The pair has created the artistic world of Recover Laboratory, a Finnish pioneer of immersive performances. Sirkka hails from experimental contemporary circus and Häkkinen from fine arts; together they explore the space of performance art with their signature way of looking at the world, where the mundane becomes surreal, and humor and vulnerability are present simultaneously. 

Sirkka and Häkkinen’s performance “the Life and Death” brings together elements of performance art, DJ & VJ gigs, and having grown up in the 00’s. The performance can be seen as criticism of hetero- and mono-normativity, along with capitalistic perfectionism. Queerdos Häkkinen and Sirkka build a shared moment of fun, weirdness, horror, play, love and tears, while probing around the space they occupy right now both mentally and physically.

In the performance, the hypersexualization afab bodies are subjected to in everyday life is made visible and reclaimed. The duo takes matters into their own hands with the imagery of popular culture, movies and music. The performance rises from pure enjoyment. One of the kindles for the piece is the many incidents when the artist’s work has been criticized for showing boobs on stage.

CW: sexual movement, childbirth, death, tattoo needles, nudity