Category: Urban Studies

EKA Urban Studies MSc programme invites prospective masters students to join the programme’s Online Open House on Thursday, February 4, 2021 at 17:00 (GMT+2).

This will be a good opportunity to hear more about the programme, and to meet and ask questions directly from the department staff and current students:

• Professor Maroš Krivy (Head of the Urban Studies)
• Keiti Kljavin (Lecturer of Urban Studies)
• Mira Samonig (1st year MA student)
• Egemen Mercanlioglu (2nd year MA student)
• Kaija-Luisa Kurik (Associate Lecturer at Manchester School of Architecture)
• Leonard Ma (architect, runner of New Academy)

The open house event will be hosted online over Zoom.

If you would like to attend, please register online through the form below. A link to attend will be e-mailed shortly before the event begins.

REGISTER HERE

More information about the Urban Studies MSc programme: https://www.artun.ee/en/curricula/urban-studies/ and on Facebook page.

“INSULA NUDUS: Paljassaare beyond interesting” is a public exhibition and a final grading of Estonian Academy of Arts Urban Studies Urbanisation studio, tutored by Andra Aaloe and Keiti Kljavin.

You are interesting, paljassaare is interesting, everything there is so interesting – it’s romantic, it’s so natural, it’s also hip and so unexplored and under cover; it takes you to the wild side, it takes you to a free and wild space; wow, it’s just so interesting! It’s full of opportunities and potential, so interesting!

“Interesting” seems to be a widely shared, dominating quality when it comes to the Paljassaare peninsula. Nature, wilderness, tranquility, decay, an escape – and all of this located in the capital city itself. But what actually constitutes this “interesting”? What lies beyond that?

On Saturday (12 Dec 2020) starting from 11am everyone is welcome to visit six different individual exhibits located all around the peninsula. You are welcome to explore them in your preferred order and with your individually chosen means of transport, but do mark that sites are open on different time slots (see the programme below).

All the sites are marked here: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit….

Everyone is welcome to gather around the finissage-bonfire of the event at 4pm next to the  (at the meadow next to the tower with a bird mural on the facade: https://goo.gl/maps/cH6Ve3uZhxpU8uif9).

Be prepared for frosty temperatures, bring along some snacks, drinks and everything you need for a lengthy, wintery expedition in the bushes. Refreshments will also be served at some of the locations to keep you going, so don’t forget to bring a mug.

The mini-festival of Paljassaare is put together by Janosh Heydorn, Daria Khrystych, Dalma Pszota, Mira Samonig, Karlotta Sperling and Fernanda Torres.

And we thank you for the help along the way: Flo Kasearu, Abraham Kenny, Simona Medolago, Maros Krivy, Muhammad Ali Ul Hussnain, Lera Mikhailova, Andres Ojari, Panu Lehtovuori, Kille Alterman, Yuriy, Sergey, Natalia, Aleksey.

PROGRAMME

NB! Find the exact locations here:
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit….

11.00–13.00 (Paagi 8) // Right to the social retreat / participatory intervention by Daria Khrystych
What is social about social services and social housing? Official social welfare network is supposed to grant people with financial or social problems a way to still remain in society through assistance and support. In the perception of “functional” members of society, it is a fringe, an edge of the society in large that the “clients” of these facilities are pushed to. But what happens if we’d turn it over and look at the social house as a social retreat, something that we all need from time to time? The participatory intervention “Right to the social retreat” is an attempt to bring the edge (Paljassaare and its “social village”) to be the new and needed centre of the city by broadening the general perceptions of the “social services”.

11.30–13.00 (recycling yard area at Paljassaare tee 17) // “We should do something here!” Vol. 1 / audio adventure by Karlotta Sperling
Change is ahead and the future of Paljassaare seems to be mapped out and already fixed in a seemingly endless number of high-polished detail plans and real estate fantasies. But how does culture influence the anticipated change and what do I have to do with it? And finally, can a plan predict the future?

13.30–15.00 (entrance to the Paljassaare tee 40 area) // “We should do something here!” Vol. 2 / audio adventure by Karlotta Sperling
The series of “We should do something here” continues! Same topic, different location! Adventure is on!

12.00–14.00 (on top of Kopli hill at Maleva 4) // ARCO-BAY/ECO-SANTI: 50 years of eco-cities / audio walk by Fernanda Ayala Torres

Cities are not designed in coherence with nature, as potential places for human cohabitation with other organisms, because originally the city was to free humans from the contingency and wilderness of nature. But now, in the urbanised world and in the face of the pending climate crisis, the way we’re relegated to live in millions of little cubes separated only by roads and parking lots and cars makes us rethink the way we live and consume. From here the ambiguous and ambitious idea of an “eco-city” appears, this 50 years old concept, which aims to integrate the urban into ecology or/and vice versa. The audio walk “ARCO-BAY/ECO-SANTI: 50 years of eco-cities” is questioning the future paper-development of Ecobay in Paljassaare by drawing comparisons to another very different realisation of an eco-city: Arcosanti, an urban laboratory located in Arizona, US.

12.30–14.30 (Westernmost battery of Rannakaitsepatarei nr 12) // Out of control: Playing in the cabinet of curiosities of Paljassaare / installation by Dalma Pszota

The surrounding objects and our built environment define us just as much as the ideology we construct when trying to systematize the world. But who has the power and the privilege to decide our future? With the fragments of the Cabinet of Curiosities for the Anthropocene and the (Collage) City, this installation urges us to find a new order to things and reconfigure our role in an ever-accelerating neoliberal reality in the context of Paljassaare.

13.00–15.00 (Paljassaare linnuvaatlustorn/bird tower) // Watching birds from above / installation/intervention by Janosh Heydorn

Conservation areas such as the Paljassaare hoiuala are humanity’s desperate attempts to slow down the extermination of bird species, powered by the exploitation of natural resources and so-called planetary urbanisation. Inspired by Donna Haraway’s thoughts about natureculture, the installation in the bird watchtower questions the precarious understanding of nature and culture as separate entities. By extending bodily senses through the perspective of a drone the work invites us to reflect on our position on Earth somewhere between being an animal and a machine.

13.30–15.30 (ruin next to the wooden walk path) // The urban wild is—everywhere to be felt—nowhere to be noticed / performance and spatial experience by Mira Samonig
A continuously flowing magnitude; from departed to intended, from not-anymore to not-yet, from memory to anticipation, from past to future. The conceptualized circle of time drags one back and forth, to an extent that the actual present existence seems to fade away in space. This performance invites to question the matter of concrete materiality. The terrain vague of Paljassaare acts as an exploratory space to research theory with one’s own matter, the body.

Facebook event

Urban Studies, resesarch studio presentation.

While few outside Berlin know where Schöneweide is, new developments led by the likes of Bryan Adams and Olafur Eliasson position the neighbourhood as a silent frontier of gentrification dynamics in the city. This research studio explores ongoing transformation of this former industrial area, once the base of the famous AEG electrical company. Contra the commonplace reading of gentrification through the lens of ‘hipster’ culture, the studio underlines the roles of state, finance and real estate as drivers of neighbourhood change and displacement. Investigating dynamics of gentrification at the urban edge, the case of Schöneweide serves as an entry point into a wider debate on how diverse groups are vested in reclaiming cities and its intersection with the official political structures – it necessitates rethinking the role of city planners as mediators between the public and private interests.

A lake and a port. Summer housing and mass housing. Metal, steel, automobiles, and the not-so distant memories of phosphorus mining. Beyond the towers of Vanalinn and the limestone of Lasnamäe exists this municipal assemblage that over 15,000 people call home.

Beyond Borders: Moving through Maardu is a public output & final grading of Estonian Academy of Arts Urban Studies Urbanisation studio “Tallinn–Maardu: expedition into the edge”, tutored by Andra Aaloe & Keiti Kljavin.

Whether or not you are familiar with Maardu, this festival of a kind will urge you to experience the area through various site-specific interventions exploring its physical and conceptual boundaries, the global and local activities that shape it, and the area’s relationship to neighbouring localities.

There will be a private bus service to transport guests to each event according to the programme below. To register for the tour bus that will travel to each exhibition of the festival, please email Lisa Rohrer at lisa.rohrer@artun.ee. You are also welcome to visit individual exhibits via your own transportation at the times displayed in the program schedule below. Please note that the private bus will not return to Tallinn, but public transportation runs between Maardu and Tallinn for our return trip.

Please dress warmly for outdoor weather and bring along snacks and refreshments! For more information check FB EVENT!

PROGRAMME SCHEDULE ON 14 DECEMBER 2019:

9:00–9:25 Urban artist in an urban field

(Last chance to use the loo) – Jesse Keddie

Photo Installation at Põhja pst 7 (Estonian Academy of Arts)

Stanely Kubrick said on the art of filmmaking “You may not have to know very much about anything else, but you must know about photography”. So what do I know? I know about filmmaking and I know about photography. On display at EKA will be the forgotten fields of Rootsi-Kallavere that embody how I express the world at large – it’s not what I’m doing in the space it’s what the space is doing through me.

9:30 Private bus service leaves from EKA, Tallinn

10.00–10:25 Occupying the void – Marina Pushkar

Walk and installation, starting point at Fosforiidi and Kroodi intersection.

The pedestrian tunnel connecting the Kroodi industrial park and the lake of Maardu facilitates the transition from the industrial realm to the prefigurative urban wilderness. Through a guided walk and installation, this project unveils the layers of human dominance in the process of occupying the space.

10:30–10:55 Stories from the other side – Alice Ashton

Expedition and participatory exercise at Vana-Narva maantee – Nurgatagune Puhvet, Vana Narva maantee

Vana-Narva maantee is a highway and an important geographical and infrastructural location for Maardu. It is also home to many diverse local activities and phenomena. Taking speculative fiction, installation, participatory art and postmodern and post-urban theory as a basis, Stories from the other side invites participants to consider how  narratives, signs and momentalisation are didactic processes that shape urbanisation and the different lenses that Vana-Narva maantee can be seen through. 

11:00–11:25 The last outpost – Ahmad Tahir

Walk-exercise, starting point at Madikse tee

The process of urbanisation reshapes the concept of the ‘hinterland’ as a warehouse that serves the capital. This curated walk in the backyards of the Kärmu industrial zone explores the role of the post-industrial town of Maardu in regional development, and the municipality’s future speculations in the neoliberal realm.

11:30–12:00 Walking along a life vein – Sarah Gerdiken 

Guided walk

Walking the solid but disused line of railroad, the landscape surrounding us is united by different scales of human use joining together the travelers of its past, present and expected scenarios of the future. Wear your gloves and proper shoes!

12:05–12:30 AED – Annika Ülejõe

Installation at Kitsekakra 17, Muuga aedlinn

AED looks at the process of suburbanisation changing the dynamics of the once solely summerhouse area on the basis of a family archive. By revealing layers of history, the on-site intervention highlights both physical alteration of the area and the change in its social fabric.  

12:35–13:00 Muuga muutub (Muuga Changes) – Deniz Taşkın 

Interactive platform, Muuga aedlinn

For last decades Muuga aedlinn has been experiencing a profound change in its urban fabric and daily practices. An interactive platform is created for locals and visitors alike to archive the change in process, inviting old and new locals to spot the alteration of Muuga in order to be able to cope with it.

13:10–13:35 Muuga harbour: The Once Only Unicorn – Egemen Mercanlioglu

Performance-lecture on the roundabout of Laasti tee and Veose street

On an ambiguous roundabout that overlooks the Muuga Harbour, a (non)speculative story of the likely future development of the biggest cargo harbour in Estonia will be put across. Zooming out to grasp the patterns of globalisation-driven urbanisation process of Muuga and Estonia, the narration covers topics from the Rail Baltic to the digitalization. Travelling from Muuga to China and back to Muuga again, this story will help visitors to track the traces of urbanisation.

13:40–14:05 A lonesome hill – Oleksandr Nenenko

Performance/exhibition at Ringi 54D, Maardu

Courtyards of mass housing areas as enclosed places for meeting and daily practices accompany the processes around urban, from severe housing crisis to land use value. This project looks at the visible and non-visible changes of one courtyard in Kallavere by trying to answer a seemingly simple question: “why is the hill so lonely?”. 

14:10–14:35 Walk around the image – Zahaan Khan

Guided walk, starting point at Ringi 54D, Maardu 

In a heavily visual culture, images can act as representative symbols for a city. Through an investigative walk, this performance will look closer at the orthodox church of Archangel Michael in Maardu to understand how it became to be the centerpiece of the new image created for the city’s socio-cultural life in the past decade.

14:45–15:10 In memory of the City – Lisa Rohrer

Ceremonial performance, at Keemikute street (near the Maardu kalmistu bus stop)

The Maardu Cemetery functions as a hybrid space – it is a site for life and for death, for grief and for celebration of a memory, for spirituality and for pragmatism, for expressing emotion and for economic exchange. In light of postmodern scholarship from the late 20th century, this exhibition will consider the death of “the city” and witness the emergence of “the urban” at its passing.

15:15–15:40 New archives as karaoke – Wimke Dekker

Screening at Fortuna bar, Stardi 2, Maardu

A spiderweb of scales and structures, houses and containers, roads and electricity networks. The frames are given, but the people who are living in Maardu are what creates a process, a movement, a development. Combining new archives from the internet with fragments that show details of daily life, this film, shown at a local bar Fortuna, creates a new archive of the present.

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

​Daniel Koehler – The Mereological City 2014
Model, scale 1:10000: computational model based on the Vertical City Schema by Ludwig Hilberseimer.

On 19th of November at 6 pm, the Open Lecture series will continue with architect, urbanist and researcher Daniel Köhler, arriving in Tallinn from London where he teaches at the Bartlett School of Architecture. In his research and in his lecture in Tallinn, Köhler focuses on the mereology of cities – how particles form a whole in the example of cities, making this a lecture that in addition to architects should definitely capture the attention of urbanists.

At the Bartlett School of Architecture, Köhler leads a Research Cluster in Urban Design and is the Coordinator of the Theory and History Module of the Postgraduate B-Pro Architecture Design Program. Furthermore, he is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Innsbruck and the co-founder of the Lab for Environmental Design Strategies. Köhler has taught at the Aalto University, Vilnius Art Academy, Sci-Arc, Städelschule and the University of East London. In 2016, Köhler published “The Mereological City”, a study on the modes of part-to-whole relations between architecture and its city during modernism. His recent research investigates on the physical implications of digital logistics: cities designed by pure quantities and their architecture.

Mereology is a branch of ontology that discusses part to whole relationships. When we say that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, we are performing a mereological equation. Köhler describes the architecture of the city as a compositional tension, realized with a multiplicity of buildings, with the city itself.

http://www.lab-eds.org/The-Mereological-City

More about Daniel Köhler: http://www.lab-eds.org/

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 Faculty of Architecture of the Estonian Academy of Arts has been curating the Open Lectures 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.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Siim Tuksam

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

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

We are welcoming applications for the MA program in Urban Studies.
The admission period for Estonian applicants starts on June 20, 2016 and documents must be submitted by July 1, 2016. Interviews will be held on July 6, 2016 at 14.00.
Application can be filled online https://www.sais.ee/
Please see more on the program at www.artun.ee/en/curricula/urban-studies and more on the admissions at www.artun.ee/en/admissions/masters
Contact: arhitektuur@artun.ee / +372 642 0072

The admission deadline for international applicants was May 1, 2016.