Category: Architecture and Urban Design

The next lecturer of the Open Lecture Series this autumn will be Stockholm-based writer, editor, designer and broadcaster James Taylor-Foster. Taylor-Foster will be stepping on the stage of the main auditorium of the new EKA building on the 29th of November at 6 pm to talk about the role of display, exhibitionism, words, and speech as instruments of architectural practice.

James Taylor-Foster is working in the fields of architecture, design, e-culture and technology. He is curator of contemporary architecture and design at ArkDes, Sweden’s national centre for architecture and design. Formerly European editor-at-large at ArchDaily, the world’s most visited architecture platform, he has practiced architecture in the UK and The Netherlands. In 2016 he co-curated the Nordic Pavilion at the 15th Biennale Architettura di Venezia.

With bylines at Metropolis, PIN-UP, Domus, Volume, Monocle, Mousse, Disegno, and Real Review, he is also a regular voice on Monocle 24 radio. James has been a visiting critic or lecturer in architecture at the University of Cambridge, The Bartlett (UCL), University College Dublin, the Architectural Association, the CASS, the Strelka Institute, TU Delft, the Berlage Institute, and MIT. He sits on the advisory board of the Future Architecture Platform.

According to Taylor-Foster architecture is a practice of referencing, referring to, mimicking, and communicating. Architects—and those who operate in and around the sphere of building environments for people and things—hunt and gather in order to absorb and represent. This talk will explore the role of display, exhibitionism, words, and speech as instruments of architectural practice.

The architecture and urban planning department of the EKA has been curating the Open Lectures on Architecture series since 2012 – each year, a dozen architects, urbanists, both practicing as well as academics, introduce their work and field of research to the audience in Tallinn. All lectures are in English, free and open to all interested.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Johan Tali

www.avatudloengud.ee
Event in Facebook

In search for an architectural ontology: Open Lecture by Caroline Voet

The next lecturer of the Open Lecture Series this autumn will beCaroline Voet – Belgian architect and professor at the KU Leuven, Faculty of Architecture. Voet will be stepping on the stage of the main auditorium of the new EKA building on the 15th of November at 6 pm to talk about the work of Dom Hans van der Laan and the search for an architectural ontology.

Voet is the co-founder of the award-winning architectural practice Voet en De Brabandere in Antwerp, Belgium. Her research and teaching have always been combined with an architectural practice. After working for Zaha Hadid Architects in London and Christian Kieckens Architects in Brussels, she founded her own office in Antwerp, working on a range of award-winning projects from furniture and museum interiors to housing and schools. She focuses on reconversions and the design of cultural buildings, public interiors, scenography and furniture. Voet is professor at the KU Leuven, Faculty of Architecture, Campus St-Lucas Ghent and Brussels, where she received her Ph.D. in 2013 on the work of Dom Hans van der Laan. She holds degrees in architecture from the Architectural Association in London and the Henry van de Velde Institute in Antwerp. She has been published in for example ARQ and Interiors Routledge. She wrote for the Architectural Yearbook Flanders and in 2016 she was co-editor of the book Autonomous Architecture in Flanders. She recently published “Dom Hans van der Laan. Tomelilla (Architectura and Natura)” and “Dom Hans van der Laan. A House for the Mind” (VAi).

In 1977, the Dutch Benedictine monk and architect Dom Hans van der Laan (1904-1991) published his treatise Architectonic Space, fifteen lessons on the disposition of the human habitat. At the same time, he built four convents and a house, a typical elementary and austere architecture that strongly communicates through tactility, colour and light. Through philosophical concepts like mass / space, inside / outside, the book tried to define a deep-level structure that would explain how we perceive space and how we build. Is it possible to grasp experience and tactility within a philosophical and rational framework? Voet’s lecture unravels the interwoven genealogy of theory, design practice and building. It links Dom van der Laan’s philosophical concepts of dwelling with the concrete experience of his architecture. What is the connection between theory and practice, if any?

Caroline Voet’s open lecture takes place in co-operation with EKKM, where on 16 November at 6 pm, Ingel Vaikla exhibition You Have Become the Space opens (curated by Laura Toots). More info on the exhibition: https://www.facebook.com/events/2229621923950764/

The architecture and urban design department of the Estonian Academy of Arts has been curating the Open Lectures on Architecture series since 2012 – each year, a dozen architects, urbanists, both practicing as well as academics, introduce their work and field of research to the audience in Tallinn. All lectures are in English, free and open to all interested.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Johan Tali, for this lecture: Siim Tuksam.

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

More info:
Pille Epner
E-post: arhitektuur@artun.ee

From Carpenter to Architect: Open Lecture by Wolfgang Tschapeller

The next lecturer of the Open Lecture Series this autumn will be Austrian architect and head of the Institute of Art and Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna – Wolfgang Tschapeller. Tschapeller will be stepping on the stage of the main auditorium of the new EKA building on the 1st of November at 6 pm to talk about Architecture with a capital A.

Wolfgang Tschapeller was initially trained as a carpenter and studied architecture at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Tschapeller has taught as a visiting professor at Cornell University, the University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria, and the State University of New York in Buffalo, as well as other academic institutions.

Johan Tali, one of the curators of the Architecture Open Lecture series, points out that Wolfgang Tschapeller is considered today one of the most important contemporary Austrian architects. “The longtime dean of the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna Institute of Art and Architecture, Tschapeller is a proponent of progressive spatial education and an uncompromising practitioner. He employs contemporary design and new technologies and materials in his work to create new and exciting spatial experiences, and to – if only for a moment – sway the persistent gravitational force and the comfort zone of human perception. His background in woodworking gives him a unique advantage: the detailed and painstaking process of designing and constructing structures out of minute parts leads to an original architectural whole nearly without exception.”

More about Wolfgang Tschapeller: www.tschapeller.com

Known for his unusual building proposals, Tschapeller’s large-scale projects include the BVA 1, 2, and 3 series for the Vienna headquarters of the Austrian Insurance Fund for Public Employees; the design for the construction of a hotel in the Schwarzenberg Palace Garden in Vienna; the European Cultural Centre between the Palatine Chapel and the city hall in Aachen, Germany; the project for the Centre for Promotion of Science in Belgrade and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. The administrative building of the municipal authority in Murau, Austria (2002) and the St. Joseph House (2007) embody some of his quintessential ideas.

The architecture and urban design department of the Estonian Academy of Arts has been curating the Open Lectures on Architecture series since 2012 – each year, a dozen architects, urbanists, both practicing as well as academics, introduce their work and field of research to the audience in Tallinn. All lectures are in English, free and open to all interested.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Johan Tali
www.avatudloengud.ee
https://www.facebook.com/EKAarhitektuur/

More info:
Pille Epner
E-post: arhitektuur@artun.ee

Natalia Araya is young jewellery artist from Costa Rica who graduated MA studies in Escola d’Art i Superior de Disseny de València this year.

Short overview of thesis:
“Enamel and volume” is the title of a year long project, that challenged me to move from jewelry to objects and to explore enamelling in depth.

The simplest way to describe enamelling is as a technique that bonds glass and metal, but the process inherently required to practice it, has given me the freedom to find my own voice and to question myself though making.

I’ve created a group of objects with surfaces that have registered every touch, every though, with shapes that invite to celebrate simplicity, the incomplete, imperfections and the passing of time.”

Natalia was inivited to give enamelling masterclass for jewellery students October 22-26, 2018.

On Thursday, 18th October at 5pm in room A302 will take place Canadian artist Tor Lukasik-Foss’s artist talk.

Tor Lukasik-Foss(1967) is a visual artist, performer and writer from Canada, whose works examine the mechanics of public space and social anxiety. Over the last decade he has focused on a series of sculptural performance chambers and shadow boxes loosely assembled under the moniker “unlikely concerts”, which simultaneously fuse public and private spaces together. Side by side with his visual art practices he performs and writes songs under the pseudonym ‘tiny bill cody’ and has released collections of original songwriting over the last two decades. Tor Lukasik-Foss is currently in a four-week residency at Tallin Art Hall, organized by the Estonian Artists Association as part of the Hamilton Arts Council European artist exchange.

At the artist talk on Thursday Tor Lukasik-Foss will present his art practice, talk about the work he has been doing at the residency here in Tallinn and discuss social anxiety and its affect on sculpture and performance.

Artist talk will be held in English.

www.torlukasikoss.ca

Enrique Sobejano, architect of Arvo Pärt Centre’s soon to be opened new building, to give a public lecture in Tallinn

Opening the architecture Open Lectures season on the 20th of September at 6 pm will be Enrique Sobejano. Sobejano is the founder and partner of Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, that won the architecture competition of the new building of Arvo Pärt Centre to be opened in October.

The Spanish architecture bureau received the prestigious Alvar Aalto Medal and became an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects in 2015. The Madinat al-Zahra Museum by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos in Spain received the European Museum of the Year award in 2012 and the Contemporary Art Centre Córdoba was shortlisted for this year’s Mies van der Rohe Award. Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos can be characterised by a subtle sense of material and detail and a skilful use of natural light. Equally important is the context and the experiential quality of each project. In his lecture, Enrique Sobejano will introduce the new building of Arvo Pärt Centre, to be opened in October 2018. He will describe what the intentions of the architects were and what kind of space they wanted to create.

From Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos website: “The Arvo Pärt Centre has been designed as a place for concentration and study, a space conceived in order to keep the creative legacy of the great Estonian composer alive. Set in a landscape of great beauty, in the middle of a dense forest of tall pines, the design originates from a geometric pattern formed by pentagonal patios. Variations of the size and position of the same generate spatial sequences that configure the different areas of the plan. The interior space is structured around a wall—a boundary within whose thickness are housed much of the facilities, in addition to serving as a dividing element between the public and private areas of the building. In the exterior, a single element highlights the architectural proposal: a large roof conceived as a folded platform to adapt to the different heights required in the interior. The facades are treated as a filter defined by a series of thin circular columns that make up the supporting structure of the roof. The greater or lesser density in the arrangement of the pillars allows for alternate areas of great transparency with others more protected from the natural light. A slender helical observation tower and a small chapel inserted in one of the patios, complete a project in which music, landscape and architecture come into resonance.”

Enrique Sobejano (Madrid, Spain, 1957) has graduated from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the Graduate School of Architecture and Planning at Columbia University in New York. He is professor at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK) and has been a visiting critic and lecturer at various international universities worldwide. From 1986 to 1991 he was co-director of the architectural journal ARQUITECTURA. He is a founding partner of Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos. The bureau has offices in Madrid and Berlin.

The Architecture and Urban Design department of the Estonian Academy of Arts has been curating the Open Lectures on Architecture series since 2012 – each year, a dozen architects, urbanists, both practicing as well as academics, introduce their work and field of research to the audience in Tallinn. All lectures are in English, free and open to all interested.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Johan Tali

www.avatudloengud.ee

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

More info:

Pille Epner

arhitektuur@artun.ee

Dates: 20-24 August 2018

Volume: 40 hours, 3 ECTS

Location: Department of Architecture at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Pikk tn 20, Tallinn

Number of participants: max 25

Cost: FREE (Please note that this course is meant for higher education students only)

Registration deadline: 6th of May

In case of high volume of applications, prospective participants are asked to write an essay one A4-format page in length (approximately 250 words).

Content of the course

This workshop is structured on architecture, numbers and cognition with the focus mainly on public space. Two broader topics pervade the workshop. One of them is more physical, involving translating the world into parameters, and the other is mapping social activities. The broad goal is to find connections between the two sets of topics. The environment around us consists of a number of physically countable and measurable parameters, which we can use to describe it (width of a carriageway, location of a cafe). Which parameters are the best for describing or designing the world?  As another important topic, we will map the movements or activities of human masses, using photo and image analysis and Wi-Fi positioning to this end. When, why and where are people moving and how long do they stop – this is an important set of topics, because the quality of space is largely dependent on the presence of people.  The participants in the summer academy course will be challenged to find relationships between the physical world and human activity. It will be important to find a means and method for measuring and documenting the environment. Cognition referred to in the course name refers to experience that can be used in future to make decisions to design and re-design space.  Ideally, we envision the participants who complete the academy to be capable of imagining and perceiving the implications of 1,000 people or 100 cars passing a point.

Picking key parameters (properties) from this environment has long received attention from urbanism scholars: William H. Whyte, who attempted to trace patterns of use of public space, or Kevin Lynch, who tried to find the mental model people use to understand a city.

The late 20th century brought a rise in computing power, which has resulted in change in the accuracy and use of many calculations. In the past, it was not conceivable to calculate trajectories from one building to another manually, but it is now possible. Alongside this trend, a completely new field has arisen: various kinds of simulations. Simulations make it possible to model traffic, pedestrians or both at the same time. Gathering data has become more intensive with a focus moving from gathering qualitative data to collecting quantitative data.  A large part of the summer school involves field observations, which helps instil intuition in participants as to what a given indicator means. This will also give them a clearer understanding of the computational processes and outcomes and they will be able to rationally assess the outcomes of some simulation or facts presented to them.

Participants will become well-versed in methods and means for quantitatively and qualitatively documenting the street-level space, which can in turn later be used for analysis of other places. The participant will also receive an overview of and access to software used in the framework of the workshop. At the end of the summer school, all of the data that was gathered will be made public to allow third parties to use them in their projects – for example, to plan more fluid, safer traffic conditions.

More information and link to registration form: https://www.artun.ee/summeracademy/numbers-and-cognition/

The next lecturer of the Open Lecture Series this spring semester is Boštjan Vuga, stepping on the stage of Kanuti Gildi SAAL (Pikk 20, Tallinn) on 22nd of March at 6 pm to talk about possible future of construction sites that have turned into urban ruins due to economic or political crises.

SADAR+VUGA‘s largest project – Sports Park Stožice in Ljubljana, a hybrid of sports, leisure and commercial programs – was only partially completed due to the recent economic crisis. SADAR+VUGA were involved in an international student workshop searching for possible futures of the large decaying construction site that would be more appropriate for the specific post-capitalist society.

Similarly, the massive structure of the Home of Revolution (architect Marko Mušič) was never finished. It has been sitting in the urban tissue of Nikšić, Montenegro for nearly three decades after the project was abandoned in the 1980s. After winning an international competition for its adaptation and renovation, SADAR+VUGA, HHF Architects and Dijana Vučinić initiated realization of the project’s gradual transition from an urban ruin into a covered public space that generates cultural, social and economic changes in a postindustrial Montenegrin town.

Boštjan Vuga graduated at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana in 1992 and completed the postgraduate masters course at the AA School of Architecture in London from 1993-1995. Together with Jurij Sadar, they founded the SADAR+VUGA (S+V) office in Ljubljana in 1996, which in two decades took place as one of the critical European architectural practices with production and communication based on an open, integral and innovative concept. Their most acclaimed works include Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia (1996), Central part of the National Gallery, Ljubljana (1996) Stadium and Multipurpose hall Stožice (2010) and Air Traffic Control Centre Ljubljana (2013). The office has received many national and global architectural awards (Bauwelt Prize, Iconic Award, Archmaraton Award, Piranesi award, Plečnik Prize) and eight Mies van der Rohe Award nominations. Additionally the teach and critic internationally acknowledged universities and Vuga was a co-curator at the Montenegro Pavilion, “Treasures in Disguise” at the14th Venice Biennale of Architecture “Fundamentals”, Venice 2014.

The Open Lecture Series brings to Tallinn a number of exciting architects, urban planners, academics from across the world. All Open Lectures are free of charge, in English, take place every fortnight, and are open to everyone – for both students and professionals of the field, general audience and students considering architecture for their further studies.

The architecture and urban design department of the Estonian Academy of Arts has been curating the Open Lectures on Architecture series since 2012 – each year, a dozen architects, urbanists, both practicing as well as academics, introduce their work and field of research to the audience in Tallinn. All lectures are in English, free and open to all interested, drawing an audience of students as well as professionals and academics from the fields of architecture, design, engineering but also fine arts. The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Siim Tuksam

www.avatudloengud.ee
Event in Facebook

More info: Pille Epner / arhitektuur@artun.ee / +372 642 0071

OPEN LECTURE SERIES: Anastasia Pistofidou – combining the analog and the digital towards applied research focused on new materials, art and textiles

The second lecturer of the Open Lecture Series this spring semester will be Anastasia Pistofidou, stepping on the stage of Kanuti Gildi SAAL (Pikk 20, Tallinn) on 8th of March at 6 pm. Her lecture is titled “Towards a new discipline of Digital Fabrication, Textiles and Biology”.

Anastasia Pistofidou is a Greek architect specialized in digital fabrication technologies, design and education. She has a Master degree from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia 2010-2011 in Digital tectonics and a Bachelor Degree from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, department of architecture in 2008. She currently works as the director of the FabTextiles research lab and the Fabricademy, a new textile and technology academy. She combines the analog and the digital towards applied research focused on new materials, art and textiles.

Technological advances, new materials and computational design are changing the way we design and manufacture products, consume and interact. At fabtextiles and materials lab at Fab Lab Barcelona Pistofidou is developing and implementing a new approach on to how create, produce and distribute fashion elements, by using distributed manufacturing infrastructures and knowledge networks. She experiments with scanning the human body, creating interactive wearable garments, working with biomaterials and circular processes, using 3D printing and parametric 3D modeling. Inside this context her practices prescribe the role and profile of future designers. What are the new skills, materials and processes for the future generations?

The Open Lecture Series brings to Tallinn a number of exciting architects, urban planners, academics from across the world. All Open Lectures are free of charge, in English, take place every fortnight, and are open to everyone – for both students and professionals of the field, general audience and students considering architecture for their further studies.

The architecture and urban design department of the Estonian Academy of Arts has been curating the Open Lectures on Architecture series since 2012 – each year, a dozen architects, urbanists, both practicing as well as academics, introduce their work and field of research to the audience in Tallinn. All lectures are in English, free and open to all interested, drawing an audience of students as well as professionals and academics from the fields of architecture, design, engineering but also fine arts. The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Siim Tuksam

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

The last lecturer of the Open Lecture Series this autumn semester will be Basel-based architect Artem Kitaev, who will be stepping on the stage of Kanuti Gildi Saal (Pikk 20, Tallinn) on 14th December at 6 pm. Kitaev’s lecture is titled Kosmos / Chaos, it’s in English and free for everyone.

Originating from Moscow, Kitaev is working with a team based now in Moscow, Basel, New York and Bangkok. His architecture office KOSMOS works across typologies and on different scales – from door handles to the city, from earnest architecture to temporary installations. KOSMOS, in their own words, combines art with technology, global experience with respect towards local context and European professionalism with Russian drive.

Kitaev graduated in Moscow, started in Moscow office Meganom, then moved to Switzerland where he worked for 4 years for Herzog de Meuron, then focused on KOSMOS only. In parallel with architectural design, KOSMOS is involved in teaching, working on researches, industrial design and publications. First project built by KOSMOS team is Temporary museum for Center of Contemporary Culture Garage in Moscow.

More about Kitaev and KOSMOS: https://k-s-m-s.com/office

The Open Lecture Series brings to Tallinn a number of exciting architects, urban planners, academics from across the world. All Open Lectures are free of charge, in English, take place every fortnight, and are open to everyone – for both students and professionals of the field, general audience and students considering architecture for their further studies.

The architecture and urban planning department of the Estonian Academy of Arts has been curating the Open Lectures on Architecture series since 2012 – each year, a dozen architects, urbanists, both practicing as well as academics, introduce their work and field of research to the audience in Tallinn. All lectures are in English, free and open to all interested, drawing an audience of students as well as professionals and academics from the fields of architecture, design, engineering but also fine arts. The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Siim Tuksam
www.avatudloengud.ee
https://www.facebook.com/EKAarhitektuur/