Graduates

ETIS

„Bio-city: on the relevance of bio-computation in architecture and urban design” –

Doctoral thesis, defended 22.11. 2019

Supervisers PhD Mario Carpo, PhD Veronika Valk

My work and research operates at the convergence of discipline such as biology, computation and urban design. I am looking at the city from a non-anthropocentric point of view, realising that in our contemporary global world it is impossible to trace a clear distinction between nature and artifice, between landscape and city and ultimately between the biosphere and the urbansphere. From a satellite view it is quite difficult to define the boundaries between natural and artificial, contemporary global cities despite being large artificial systems often develop patterns that seem to recall natural formations of a radically different kind. From this perspective cities and their morphologies are mostly determined by the flows of matter, information and energy that fuel their metabolisms. Urbansphere, the global apparatus of contemporary urbanity, is a dense network of informational, material and energetic infrastructures that sustain our demanding metabolism while offsetting the fluctuations of the natural Biosphere. I propose a model to articulate the behaviour of the Urbansphere and define new terms for its sustainable co-evolution with the Biosphere. This responds to principles of biologic self-organisation, and operates by embedding a numerical/computational engines onto spatial/morphological substrata.

ETIS

“Between the idea, tool and real(ization): Algorithmic processes in timber architecture and design”

You can watch the defense of the doctoral thesis in EKA TV

Supervisors PhD Jüri Kermik, PhD Roland Snooks

Administration of digital design tools and technology to raise the construction potential of anisotropic materials. Introducing the terms idea, tool and real to describe the current design processes in my practise. Previously dominating linear dialog (idea to real, idea to tool, tool to real) have made its way to systematic re-appearing loops. Those loopholes have activated variability in scales (from high voltage pylon to urban city stages to accessories), integration of material characteristics (timber, plywood, glu-lam), machine limitations/ possibilities (timber manufacturers CNC mills) and sustainability (form human energy to environmental exhaustion).

ETIS

“Modulated Modularity. From mass customisation to custom mass production”

You can watch the defense of the doctoral thesis in EKA TV.

Supervisors PhD Renee Puusepp, PhD Antoine Picon

Modulated modularity proposes an algorithmic method for approaching modularity in architecture in the age of automation. This method of spatial and tectonic modulation is based on the experience gained by developing experimental projects for industrial pre-fabrication and efficient assembly, utilising available standard materials within the practice of PART Architects.
The research looks at the current state of industrial pre-fabrication and modular construction strategies as well as integrated design methods within the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry and developments within the discipline of digital architecture over the past 30 years. In parallel, the relationship between the two fields is studied through a series of experimental projects ranging from installations to buildings and infrastructural objects.
The dissertation looks at topics such as: algorithmic architecture and the crisis of pavilion architecture; modularity and pre-fab construction; building information modelling; integrated design; automation, standardisation and creativity; the politics of digitalisation and the aesthetics of modulated modularity.

siim.tuksam@artun.ee

Making Architecture Politically. From Fresh Conservatism to Aesthetics as a Form of Politics

Eelretsensendid: prof Panu Lehtovuori (Tampere Tehnikaülikool) ja prof Arie Graafland. Oponent: prof Arie Graafland.

The problem is not to make political architecture, but to make architecture politically. Making architecture politically has everything to do with breaking things open, to arrive in-between. This form of engaged architecture defines political architecture neither as ideological nor as undoing ideology, but as achieving a non-ideological status through the realisation of running room. Non-ideological architecture in that sense is truly political precisely because it is conscious of the materials it is based on. Through its aesthetic-ideological specificity, being in the world is elevated to a stage of experience and knowledge that transforms the subjective element and its situation, and exactly such an aesthetic technique can contribute to social change.

Making architecture politically will not be without consequences. Many of architecture’s properties, including its history of ideas, and forms of content need to be reconsidered. What counts, is under what conditions, and with respect to what forces, architecture could become active and creative, rather than reactive or nihilistic. Such an architecture is as much about ideas, as the discovery, and invention of new forms of the political. Making architecture politically cannot lose sight of its conditional nature either, it must take risks speculating what the future could be about.

Making architecture politically opens with an analysis of the current conjecture of Neoliberalism through the concept of the Society of the And, opposing an understanding of our condition through modes of Eitherorism. It’s a voyage, travelling along the many interdependencies of the revolutionary conservatisms of Fresh Conservatism and Progressive Neoliberalism — parallel to the arrival of a new phase of global modernisation (Second Modernity) with a special and elaborated focus on the role of contemporary architecture in Dutch society (from the 90ties onward) — while its second chapter moves beyond Fresh Conservatism; towards a possible third of emancipation in architecture with its plea for an Aesthetics as a Form of Politics towards a cosmopolitical outlook.

ETIS

Participation as Data? Architecture and Cybernetics in Europe around 1968 /

Osalus kui andmed? Arhitektuur ja küberneetika Euroopas 1968. aasta paiku

Supervisor PhD Maroš Krivy

In my thesis I work towards constructing a framework for understanding participatory practices in architecture today. As suggested by the title’s prefix ‘post’ I work from the position that the conditions for what participation mean have changed since it emerged as a concept in the 1960s.

Developed in post-war Europe to counterbalance the principles of modern architecture: that space can be controlled through organization, participatory practices in architecture originate from what can be called ‘responsive architecture’. I look at projects developed in this spirit by figures such as Cedric Price, Yona Friedman, Jan Gehl. These projects stress the importance of adaptability, new technologies, user involvement and are often represented by flexible, often abstract structures, in order to suggest the ways in which space in turn can be manipulated by its inhabitants.

Faced with the same environmental, social and technological issues these ideas have resurfaced in contemporary architectural practice at different scales. With the experience of contemporary capitalism that precisely rely on adaptability, user involvement and active participation, these practices can be criticized as redundant today. The intention of my thesis is not (only) to criticize and advise against reapplying the concepts from the 1960s, but to identify the arguments that influence or are repeated in architectural form today.

nina.jrgensen@artun.ee

ETIS

“Dünaamiline kontekstualism”

Supervisor PhD Margus Ott

Planeeritav doktoritöö otsib arhitektuuripraktika laiematest ümbrustest uusi ruumiideid. Eesmärgiks on jõuda heuristilise tööriistani, mis aitaks (nt klimaatilisse, geograafilisse, majanduslikku, poliitilisse, psühholoogilisse, poeetilisse) ümbrusesse kätketud ruumiideedel paremini tegelikesse arhitektuuriprojektidesse jõuda. Samuti tõstatatakse küsimus, mida võiks tähendada Eesti oludele vastav (kontekstitundlik) arhitektuur.