Events

A series of open architectural lectures will be held this 2023 spring under the title “Triggers of Architecture”. The theme brings architects and theoreticians to Tallinn, who analyze the root causes of architecture and the means of making it.

On May 25 at 6 p.m., Kadambari Baxi will explore the connections between architecture and activism, geopolitics, and propaganda with the lecture “Building Activism: A New Agenda for Architecture”.

She will share her collaborative projects where concerns for human rights and climate futures spur different forms of architectural activism. Examining migrant labor exploitation on construction sites, reproductive rights politics, transnational air pollution and climate resilience, she links architecture to geopolitics and advocacy. The lecture discusses how local building sites expand unequal global processes; climate models reconstruct transnational air pollution to depict new zones of toxic responsibility; a plant-installation advocates for abortion rights, and a stalled climate resilience construction evokes imminent climate futures. Collectively, these projects aim to outline a new agenda for activism in architecture.

Kadambari Baxi, architect and educator based in New York, works collaboratively forming interdisciplinary partnerships on project basis. Her design, research and media projects circulate widely in international forums. As Professor of Practice in the Undergraduate Architecture Department at Barnard College, Columbia University, she teaches design studios and environmental visualization seminars. Recent advocacy includes cofounding the group “Who Builds Your Architecture?” and serving on the advisory board of “The Architecture Lobby.”

Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning of EKA presents a dozen unique practitioners and valued theorists in the field in Tallinn every academic year.

The lectures are intended for all disciplines, not only for students and professionals in the field of architecture. All lectures take place in the large auditorium of EKA, are in English and free of charge.

The lecture series is supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curated by Andres Ojari.

www.avatudloengud.ee

Event in Facebook

Additional information:

Tiina Tammet

E-post: arhitektuur@artun.ee

Tel. +372 642 0071

Are you interested in keeping up-to-date with the latest discussions and topics of Estonian urbanism?

Our group of students studying Urban Studies, Architecture, and Urban Planning warmly invites you to join us on this journey of collectively curated exhibition.

SAVE THE DATE! 16 OF MAY at 15:00 in front of the main entrance of EKA. The final grading of Urban Studies Urban Models course is tutored by Kristi Grišakov & Keiti Kljavin.

The sun is rising from Eastern Estonia, as the title suggests, the hope for better and more just futures is on the horizon. The displayed experiments and projects aim to reflect the development prospects of the county, situated on the edge of Estonian land. We explore urban districts and towns of Ahtme, Järve and the Kiviõli where mono-functionality of extractivistic production has challenged to respond to the surplus of housing caused by the outmigration. By exploring various topics related to (in)tangible aspects of habitation in Ida-Virumaa county our projects are based on on-site analysis, local exploring, reinventing and rethinking approaches towards shrinkage, adaptation and re-use.

Some of us try to approach the typologies and forms of architecture in new modalities, and integrate facilities according to the actual needs of current habitats. Others attempt to restart the time in the city or see the new ways of residing for transnational communities. Together with 6 projects we paint a multilayered picture to have a glimpse into the future of Ida-Virumaa, challenging the condition of shrinkage in Eastern Estonia.

Students: 

Aleyna Canpolat, Alp Eren Özap, Axelle Boireau, Diana Drobot, Ishrat Shaheen, Jim Wolff, Kalina Trajanovska, Larisa Illetterati, Maria Laura Bendezu Ulloa, Martin Sepp, Noa Ruijten, Simon Baguette

The evening begins with a lecture on Socially involved design by Michał Stefanowski. He will be talking about the practice of social design and showing examples from the world and projects realized at the Design Department in Warsaw. The lecture is followed by a conversation with a focus on the impact and layers of meaning of social design. We will discuss intervention options of social design and what makes it different from other design solutions. In other words, why it is or is not important to deal with social design.

REGISTER HERE

Speakers:

Michał Stefanowski has an active design practice. As a professional, he is a member of the INNO+NPD design team. He has created designs for products, street furniture, packaging, wayfinding systems and visual communication. He is the co-author of the City Information System for Warsaw, the Information System for the Royal Castle in Warsaw and the visual identity of the National Bank of Poland, among others. He is a professor and Head of the Design Department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. 

Ruth-Helene Melioranski is the Dean of Design at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She has a background in design research, practice and education, focussing on exploring how design can tackle societal challenges. She conceptualises new and emerging design practices in higher educational and professional contexts through her research-through-design projects. Her research focuses on relational design and its qualities. In her professional practice, she leads several strategic, service and co-design projects to help partners envision their future possibilities and build scenarios in healthcare and well-being.
Before her deanship, she developed the Design & Technology Futures MSc and supervised students’ teams with their design-driven innovation projects at Tallinn University of Technology. She was the founding head of the Estonian Design Centre (2008-2011) and, prior to that, the leader of the Estonian Design Year (2006-2007).

Daniel Kotsjuba is a designer working in Estonian Public Sector Innovation Team, part of Estonian Government Office. Their task is to help ministries and their sub-organisations design their services, process and strategies more user-centered. They base their work on design process, with an attention on behavioural sciences and experimentation framework.

Eva Liisa Kubinyi is a designer and creative researcher fascinated by the opportunities for children and young people to participate in society, the principles of open play and care models that support mental well-being. In her design practice, she relies parallelly on the theories of social design, service design and children’s culture.

The Embassy of Spain and the Estonian Academy of Arts invite:

The first presentation of the fashion collection “Estonia” by Spanish fashion designer Juan Duyos in Estonia will take place on Wednesday, May 10, 2023 at 16:00 in the auditorium A–501 of the Estonian Academy of Arts.

All fashion enthusiasts and lovers are welcome!

Juan Duyos is a well-known fashion designer in Spain who, among others, designs for the Spanish royal family. The fashion collection, which will be presented for the first time in Estonia, is inspired by the Estonian land, fashion and craft culture.

“A visit to Estonian nature, the symbiosis of folklore and modernity, and the new use of old techniques was the initial impetus for the “Estonia” collection,” says Piret Puppart, professor of fashion, textile and accessory design at the Estonian Academy of Arts, who was the guide for Duyos’s trip to Estonia and himself in his work on Estonian ethnology. draws ideas from nature and folklore. Puppart adds:

“Estonia has two great sources of design inspiration that I have introduced to design-minded people over the years – one of them is nature and its organic place in everyday life. We don’t have the tallest trees, the longest rivers, the mightiest mountains, but we have a certain way of thinking and relating to it all. We can see and understand in a different way — that’s what makes our stay in nature extraordinary. Another important aspect is that tradition is a living culture, not just a museum piece. Juan Duyos had the opportunity to see folk costumes and their masters actively making them here and now.”

In Piret Puppart’s opinion, thanks to the Duyos “Estonia” collection, Estonia itself is also gaining recognition. For example, the collection was presented at last year’s Madrid Fashion Week, which received extensive coverage in the foreign press.

“Fashion and travel go hand in hand. The novelty of a new city or an unfamiliar environment can stimulate the imagination. Such was the case of Spanish fashion designer Juan Duyos, who celebrated 25 years as a fashion designer on the runway with a collection inspired by a midsummer trip to Estonia,” says Piret Puppart, fashion designer and head of EKA’s fashion department.

Please inform us of your participation via the RSVP link.

On May 3rd from 6 pm to 7 pm on the first floor you can participate in the Game Experience created by the students of the Design for Play course.

During this event, you can play games made during the course and get a break from the stressful assessment period.

Everyone from EKA is welcome!

The department of Photography of EKA is welcoming you to the screening of two recently awarded Estonian films – “Hippodrome” by Vladimir Loginov and “Dear Passengers” by Madli Lääne.

The screenins are held in the EKA main lecture hall A-101 next Thursday, April 27th, at 6 p.m.

A series of open architectural lectures will be held this 2023 spring under the title “Triggers of Architecture”. The theme brings architects and theoreticians to Tallinn, who analyze the root causes of architecture and the means of making it.

On May 4, at 6 pm, Klaske Havik will analyze the connections between literature and architecture with the lecture “Between the lines. Poetic imagination in architecture”. Creative imagination is one of the most important tools of every creator, including an architect. Using examples, Klaske Havik examines how poetic imagination works, how some key thinkers and architects conceptualize it.

Klaske Havik is an architect, scholar and writer. She is professor of Architecture at TU Delft, holding the chair of Methods of Analysis and Imagination. Advocating a literary approach to architecture to address societal issues, Havik published, among many other edited books and articles, Urban Literacy. Reading and Writing Architecture (2014). She was editor of architecture journals de Architect and OASE, and initiated the Writingplace Journal for Architecture and Literature. Havik’s literary work appeared in poetry collections and literary magazines.  She is Chair of the EU COST Action Writing Urban Places. New Narratives for the European City – an international and interdisciplinary network that seeks for more socially inclusive and locally specific urban places through the investigation of local narratives. In Estonia, Klaske has written for Maja and Ehituskunst, and been part of the thesis board at EKA.

Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning of EKA presents a dozen unique practitioners and valued theorists in the field in Tallinn every academic year.

The lectures are intended for all disciplines, not only for students and professionals in the field of architecture. All lectures take place in the large auditorium of EKA, are in English, free of charge.

The lecture series is supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curated by Andres Ojari

www.avatudloengud.ee

https://www.facebook.com/EKAarhitektuur/

Additional information:

Tiina Tammet

E-post: arhitektuur@artun.ee

Tel. +372 642 0071

Vaim Sarv Live Performance @ Entropy Gauntlet (EKA Gallery) on Friday, April 14, 7 pm.

As part of the programming for the Entropy Gauntlet group exhibition, performance artist and experimental musician Vaim Sarv (EE/USA) will be playing free, using voice and electronics to respond to the exhibition themes revolving around the porousness of post-western notions of national identity and it’s haunted histories.

Free admission!

Entropy Gauntlet
Zody Burke, Taylor “Tex” Tehan, Joonas Timmi, Lauri Raus April 6 – April 28, 2023
Opening: April 6, 6pm–9pm

“There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room … Suddenly the TV reveals itself for what it really is: a video of another world, ultimately addressed to no one at all, delivering its images indifferently, indifferent to its own messages. You can easily imagine it still functioning after humanity has disappeared.”

— Jean Baudrillard, America

Entropy Gauntlet invites you to pass a threshold into a transmutation of space. Inspired by wide-eyed summer night visits to amusement parks and roadside motels, laden with the nostalgia of childhood & playing with the expectations generated by the psychogeography of such spaces, the exhibition leads viewers to contemplate the tension between fantasies of the world we’ve inherited versus the reality of a warming planet.

Solastalgia, a concept which describes a form of emotional or existential distress caused by environmental change, presents itself materially through an amalgam of works and artifacts set inside a narrative. Within the Entropy Gauntlet is a contemporary apologue; using architecture as archetype, exploring the porousness of post-western notions of national identity and its haunted histories. Here, utopia and dystopia become uneven categories in the realm of the anthropocene.

In the tradition of transformative environmental-architectural works such as Gregor Schneider’s “Totes Haus u r” and Jonah Freeman’s “Hello Meth Lab in the Sun”, and hearkening to Robert Ashley’s operatic compositions of late capitalist melancholia, the Entropy Gauntlet manifests as a linear series of archaeological sites undergoing perpetual excavation. It is a narrative of motion and placelessness tropifying the notion that invisible, emotional environs can be injected into the visible sphere to create a sense of longing, dread, and even abject horror.

A note from the artists…

The roadside motel is a ubiquitous feature upon the sprawling face of the continental USA, but it is entirely absent in Estonia. It is taken for granted as a place where small tragedies may or may not occur. It is a location for repressed emotions to manifest due to its invisible status, despite its ubiquity in the flyover states. Within the Entropy Gauntlet, our aim is to engage with the surreality that permeates the line where memory and history interact, in an unexpected location in Tallinn; creating a hauntological simulacrum of a space that exists between destinations. The poetic transmutations of culture that occur when countries on opposite sides of the globe mirror and refract one another are acutely fertile terrain for our work.

The fact that the USA exists partially as a fantasy informed by media is intrinsic to our concept. Two out of four of us are American; despite this, the two of us have experienced our home country in ways that run contradictory to the America that exists in the imagination of the cultural status quo. The other two of us are Estonian and have spent a considerable amount of time formulating fantasies about America & weighing these fantasies against facts. To honestly engage with the USA is to deal with omnipresent shadows that resist truth & dominate the country’s emotional cartography, and with an endless deluge of popular fantasies that provide alternative images to the USA that exists.

Artist Bios:

With an eye towards the complicated nature of inherent and enforced structures, American multidisciplinary artist Zody Burke criticizes the absurdity of late capitalism and the mythologies and archetypes it generates, while leaving a liminal space for larger ways of being together.
Working with sculpture, illustration, sound, and other media, Burke has sought to establish that societal concepts of identity, symbolism, brutality and hierarchy are as tenuous as we see to craft them, and yet they paradoxically shape practically every facet of our lives.

Taylor “Tex” Tehan is an M.A. Graphic Design student from the United States and an interdisciplinary practitioner. Working with textiles, sound, metal, wood and film, his work is influenced by the landscape, nostalgia, speculative futures, mythology and romanticism of the American West. Previously working in the fashion industry, Tehan has worked as a designer for various brands, including a recent traineeship on the Menswear Design Team at Louis Vuitton in Paris. His interests meet at the cross section of fashion, music, contemporary art, film and graphic design, with a strong emphasis on experiential-environmental themes.

Joonas Timmi is an Estonian artist & designer who explores the contemporary identity of craftsmanship by combining traditional woodworking techniques with VR-modeling, 3D-printing and CNC-milling. In his work, he expresses the relations between functionality and sentimentality in objects using furniture as the main medium. Each piece aims to be a somewhat functional artifact with an emphasis on biomorphic form with anthropomorphic charisma. A recent work, “Traction” chair, was exhibited in the exhibition “Present Yet-to-Be” (Tallinn, Hobusepea gallery) in January 2022. The installation combined meandering forms of plywood with textile to create throne-like structure, inspired by the idea of alternate realities.

Lauri Raus is an Estonian songwriter & guitarist, most notable for his work in contemporary country/shoegaze ensemble Holy Motors. Through his work, he engages with western musical tropes from a distance, transfiguring his own interpretation of Americana into something subtly different and altogether unique. His band is signed to New York-based indie label Wharf Cat which has enabled him to tour the USA, allowing him to rupture, expand, and transform his relationship with the musical tradition he uses as a foundation for his art. He studies anthropology at Tallinn University.