Category: Architecture and Urban Design

Starting from the first week of January 2026, an exhibition of ideas for renewing standard school buildings will be on display in the lobby of the Estonian Academy of Arts.

The exhibition features works completed by 2nd and 3rd year architecture and urban design students in the 2025 autumn semester, illustrated by school models.

“The studio looked for ways to design an H-shaped Soviet-era standard school building into a modern school space. Five H-type school buildings were considered, located in locations with different population densities, environments, and spatial needs.
All solutions are diverse, but they also share similar features, which, when compared, can be used to establish more general architectural principles to modernize H-type school buildings.”

Supervisors of the “School Studio”: Kertu Johanna Jõeste, Tristan Krevald, Ra Martin Puhkan, Siim Tanel Tõnisson (studio TÄNA); Mart Kalm (theory, history)

The Estonian Academy of Arts will organize its 2026 workshop “Abandoned Landscapes” in Tallinn from 19 to 22 January, with the City Hall as the focus.

The aim of the workshop, which is already being held for the 14th time, is to practice international cooperation between students of architecture, heritage conservation and interior architecture, and to understand the needs and opportunities for preserving and using local heritage. This year, the workshop will be held in collaboration with lecturers and students of the Manchester School of Architecture (MSA).

On Tuesday, January 20 at 5 pm, Dan Dubowitz will give a public lecture in the EKA auditorium: Cultural Masterplanning.

Dan Dubowitz, Visiting Professor from Manchester School of Architecture, will introduce his celebrated work on Cultural Masterplanning, which has been developing new methods for engaging people earlier and better in the transformation of their city across the UK. He will introduce his current research project, Megalomania, which includes sites in Estonia (Naissaare and Hiiumaa), the Helsinki Archipelago, Latvia (Karosta) and Lithuania (Visiginas).

This lecture is the inaugural event of a new research and public pedagogy collaboration between MSA and EKA to investigate how mobile architectural methods, such as walking and talking after dark, choreographic things and slow photography can give voice and awaken a building with narcolepsy.

Several events open to the public will also take place as part of the workshop. All interested parties are welcome to attend for free.

• Wednesday, January 21st at 5 pm, Ingel Vaikla’s documentary “The Housekeeper” (2015) will be screened in the EKA auditorium.
• On Thursday, January 22nd at 5 pm at lobby stairs, student groups will present their short films about Linnahall made during the week.

With an extraordinary Open Architecture Lecture, legendary architect and lecturer Sir Peter Cook will take the stage at the EKA hall on November 20 at 6 pm with a presentation “Piquant Motivations”, which will be supplemented by a quick overview of Archigram 10.

The lecture will examine the topics “The piquancy of the isolated object”, “The insidious charm of vegetation” and “Odd skins and clothing” through the prism of architecture, but will also seek an answer to the question, is color analogous to chatter?

“There is no more vivid dean, architect, and professional changer than Peter, who has spoken to several generations of practitioners in doing all this. I am sincerely pleased that he will come to EKA to introduce his new work and will also be selling the book in the Architecture Museum’s bookstore,” says Sille Pihlak, Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, inviting everybody to listen to the lecture.

Professor Sir Peter Cook, founder of Archigram, former Director the Institute for Contemporary Art, London (the ICA) and Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London has been a dominant figure in the architectural world for over half a century. His ongoing contribution to architectural innovation was recognised in 2007 when he was knighted by the Queen for his services to architecture. Cook’s achievements with radical experimentalist group Archigram have been the subject of numerous publications and public exhibitions and were recognised by the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2002, when members of the group were awarded the RIBA’s highest award, the Royal Gold Medal.

Cook’s continuing work as a lecturer of considerable renown makes him a familiar voice within cultural institutions around the world. With his team of architects and innovators, he continues to make waves with visionary architecture built around the world.

Also check out https://www.petercookarchitecture.com/

The lecture will be held in English and is free and open to all interested parties.

Event in FB

We invite all architecture and urbanism students to join on Monday, November 17, at 18:00, in EKA auditorium A101, to the presentation of TU Delft students work in the city of Tallinn, which is going on now for the third consecutive year. Professor Klaske Havik will give an overview of earlier projects, as this year’s students during the ongoing two weeks are  researching the city’s diverse urban spaces and developing their own design briefs based on these studies.

The graduation studio ‘A Matter of Scale’ examines the Estonian capital Tallinn, where the human scale is constantly challenged by buildings and urban plans of very different sizes. Layers of Hanseatic, Soviet, and contemporary market-driven developments coexist as much as they clash in Tallinn, conditioned as they are by the city’s distinct natural and cultural conditions.

The graduation studio is the chair of Methods of Analysis and Imagination is led by Klaske Havik (Prof.Dr.Ir.), Jorge Mejía Hernández (Dr.Ir.), Pierre Jennen (Ir.), and Freek Speksnijder (Ir.).

The 2025/2026 academic year open lecture series will be held in collaboration with the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture and the Faculty of Architecture. The theme of this academic year is “Architecture and the Ethics of Care” and the lectures will be curated by KVI Senior Researcher Dr. Ingrid Ruudi.

On November 27 at 6 pm Robert Mull will give a lecture “The Free World”.

Robert Mull will discuss the ethical responsibility of architecture and its duty of care to others through the work of the Global Free Unit in areas of displacement and conflict including France, Greece and Turkey and now in support of Ukraine and Gaza.

Robert Mull is Adjunct Professor of Architecture at the University of Limerick, a visiting Professor at Umeå University Sweden, and a Director at Publica, London. Robert was previously Director of Architecture and Dean of The Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Head of Architecture and Design at Brighton University. Robert now leads the Global Free Unit, a transnational educational structure with academic, research, NGO and institutional partners focusing on live projects within areas of displacement and war and institutions including prisons, schools and communities. Robert is currently working with partners in Ukraine in support of the Kharkiv School of Architecture and on projects in Cairo in support of displaced Gazan students and academics. Robert is also part of the Office of Displaced Designers.

Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Faculty of Architecture 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 are held on Thursdays at 6 pm in the EKA main auditorium. All lectures are in English and free of charge.

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

Previous open architecture lectures can be viewed at www.avatudloengud.ee

We are opening the exhibition “Abandoned Landscapes. Joaveski Paper Factory” on October 31st at 3:00 PM at the Joaveski Community Center, at Lahemaa.

The exhibition presents projects and models by students of the EKA Architecture and Urban Design curriculum, which explore how to value and revitalize the historic Joaveski paper factory.

The Estonian Academy of Arts’ Faculty of Architecture and the Department of Heritage Protection and Conservation organized the interdisciplinary “Abandoned Landscapes” workshop for the fourteenth time at the beginning of this year, where efforts are being made to find modern solutions for disused building complexes. This year’s workshop, professional studio and exhibition were created in collaboration with the Joaveski Village NPO, which has taken it upon itself to value the abandoned paper factory as a landmark.

The authors of the completed projects are now 3rd year architecture and urban design students: Maria Johanna Ahtijainen, Oskar Toomet-Björck, Elisabeth Ersling, Nele Lisette Hera, Heidi Jagus, Katariina Klammer, Eliis Kurvits, Lilian Källo, Lisandra Lipp, Marie Elle Melioranski, Mark Metsa, Mart Nael, Joonas Ott, Elenor Pihlak, Harriet Piirmets, Robin Pints, Elisabeth Tomingas, Katariina Vaher, Aliis Vatku, Martin Vatku.

The projects were supervised by architects Joel Kopli, Koit Ojaliiv and Juhan Rohtla from the architectural office KUU, advised by LCA consultant Anni Oviir, and the landscape architecture section was supervised by Katrin Koov and Arvi Anderson. Andres Õis welcomed and introduced the history of Joaveski.

The exhibition is supported by MTÜ Joaveski küla and AS Maru.

The exhibition will remain open at the Joaveski community center during library opening hours until April 1, 2026. Open Monday and Friday 9:00 – 16:00 and Wednesday 11:00 – 15:00.

About the history of the Joaveski factory

The construction of the Joaveski cardboard factory began in 1899 and is a vivid example of how the feudal Loobu manor adapted to the new capitalist economic environment at the end of the 19th century, which resulted in the establishment of an industrial enterprise. Joaveski developed into a small industrial village in a place of natural beauty. Today, a hydroelectric power plant operates at the heart of the factory, but most of the rooms have lost their purpose.

CANCELLED!

The 2025/2026 academic year open lecture series will be held in collaboration with the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture and the Faculty of Architecture. The theme of this academic year is “Architecture and the Ethics of Care” and the lectures will be curated by KVI Senior Researcher Dr. Ingrid Ruudi.

Architecture will be addressed from the perspective of the ethics of care: how does architecture take care of people’s physical, emotional and social needs, both today and in a historical perspective?

On November 13 at 6 pm Dr Emma Cheatle will give a lecture “Lying in the Dark Room: Architectures of British Maternity”.

This research, and my book of the same name, studies the spatial, architectural experience of childbirth, through both a critical history of maternity (lying in) spaces and buildings and a creative exploration of those that we use today.

Where conventional architectural histories objectify buildings (in parallel with the objectification of the maternal body), the book presents a creative-critical autotheory of the architecture of lying-in. It uses feminist, subjective modes of thinking, which travel across disciplines, registers and arguments. The research assesses the transformation of maternity spaces—from the female bedchamber of the eighteenth-century marital home, to the lying-in hospitals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries purpose built by man-midwives, to the late-twentieth-century spaces of home and the modern hospital maternity wing—and the parallel shifts in maternal practices. The spaces are not treated as mute or neutral backdrops to maternal history, but as a series of vital, entangled atmospheres, materials, practices and objects that are produced by, and, in turn, produce particular social and political conditions, gendered structures and experiences.

Moving across spaces, systems, protagonists and their subjectivities, I show how historic hospital design and protocol altered ordinary birth at home and continues to shape maternal spatial experience today.

Dr Emma Cheatle is Senior Lecturer in Architecture at University of Sheffield. She trained as an architect in the UK and has a PhD in Architecture from the Bartlett, UCL which was awarded RIBA President’s Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis, 2014. Her research is interdisciplinary and examines the political, cultural and social implications of architecture, art and urban space, with a particular interest in addressing health, gender, race and disability inequalities. Her monograph Part-Architecture: The Maison de Verre, Duchamp, Domesticity and Desire in 1930s Paris (Routledge 2017) is a complex architectural humanities project, which engages critical and creative writing and drawing to analyse the building the Maison de Verre and the artwork “the Large Glass”, placing new primary and archival material in the context of social, sexual and medical histories of 1920s and 30s Paris. Her second book, Lying in the Dark Room: the Architectures of British Maternity (Routledge 2024), examines how the spatial histories of lying-in and maternal practices continue to shape the maternal body today. Emma is the UK Editor for the Bloomsbury Global Encyclopaedia of Women in Architecture 1960–2015 (Bloomsbury 2025), and part of several feminist projects including the Feminist Art and Architecture Collaborative (FAAC). Her collaboration with Hélène Frichot, University of Melbourne, led to a major edited collection of articles on the feminist theorist Jennifer Bloomer, for the Journal of Architecture (2024).

The lectures are intended for all disciplines, not only for students and professionals in the field of architecture.

All lectures are held on Thursdays at 6 pm in the EKA main auditorium. All lectures are in English and free of charge.

Lecture schedule 2025 autumn

• Sept 25 Elke Krasny (Vienna Academy of Arts) “Architecture and the Right to Care”
• Oct 16 Leslie Kern (Toronto) “Towards a Feminist City.”
• Nov 13 Emma Cheatle (University of Sheffield) “Lying in the Dark Room: Architectures of British Maternity”
• Nov 27 Robert Mull (London) “The Free World”

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

Previous open architecture lectures can be viewed at www.avatudloengud.ee

New Visions in Slovak and Estonian Architecture: Exhibition and Discussion

Under the leadership of Sille Pihlak, Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, a discussion with a group of Slovak architects will be held on the contemporary development and visions of Slovak and Estonian architecture.

At the same time, we will also open the landscape/nature/architecture exhibition of students of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava.

The exhibition and event are organized by The Embassy of the Slovak Republic in Helsinki.

All interested parties are welcome!

How have cities failed women, and what can we do to make them work better for everyone? This talk explores the history and impact of male-centered urban design practices in areas such as mobility, care work, and safety. Using principles inspired by feminist theory and feminist urban planning practices, we will consider a range of ways that cities around the world are implementing more just, equitable, and sustainable approaches to city building.

Leslie Kern, PhD, is the author of three books about cities, including Gentrification Is Inevitable And Other Lies and Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World. Her latest book, with Dr. Roberta Hawkins, is Higher Expectations: How to Survive Academia, Make it Better for Others, and Transform the University. She was an associate professor of geography and environment and women’s and gender studies at Mount Allison University from 2009-2024. Leslie’s writing has appeared in The Guardian, Vox, Bloomberg CityLab, and Refinery29. She is also an academic career coach, helping academics find meaning and joy in their work.

2025/2026 open lecture series in held in collaboration of the Faculty of Architecture and the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture.

The lecture series is supported by: