Archinect - News

This cantilevering modular treehouse peeks into the Estonian wilderness

2023-10-02T12:00:00-04:00

Estonian studio Arsenit has completed an elevated timber retreat nestled in the trees close to the country’s largest waterfall. Named ‘Piil’ after the Estonian word ‘pilluma’ which means ‘peeking/looking,’ the 30-foot-tall prefabricated treehouse is elevated off the ground to minimize its interference with the forest surface while providing generous views across the Estonian countryside.

Image credit: Yifan Liu

The treehouse was designed to stand on one ‘leg’, which supports an accommodation module above. A discreet door provides access to the interior, with the cladding layer peeled back to reveal the metal structure supporting the cantilever. Both the leg and accommodation modules act as large steel trusses wrapped in pine cladding. While the leg module contains a staircase, services, and sports equipment storage, the accommodation module provides a living room and raised bedroom.

Image credit: Yifan Liu

Externally, the scheme is finishe...

Estonian Academy of Arts’ youngest ever architecture dean seeks to celebrate ‘spatial visionaries’

2023-01-19T12:23:00-05:00

The Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) has announced professor and architect Sille Pihlak as the new dean of the institute’s Faculty of Architecture. The youngest dean in the EKA’s history, Pihlak will use her position to “highlight the importance of spatial visionaries in contemporary society.”

“Architecture is more than just individualistic house drawings or data-driven urban space design; it also includes a complex social fabric, all of which are intertwined in physical space,” Pihlak said upon her appointment. “So, just as in the rest of the world, the time for change has arrived in architecture, with the academy taking the first bold steps.”

Having studied at the EKA, SCI-Arc, and the Vienna University of Applied Sciences, Pihlak has built a career that seeks alternatives to conventional building aesthetics and solutions, grounding her work in climate and social issues. For the EKA, Pihlak’...

NFTs will be at the (i)heart(blob) of the Tallinn Architecture Biennale

2021-12-17T11:49:00-05:00

The hot new trend sweeping the art and design communities will be at the center of next year’s Tallinn Architecture Biennale. The festival released its 2022 list of exhibitors on Thursday, which includes an installation program highlighted by a virtual metaverse space from the web-based studio iheartblob.

Touted as the world’s first-ever blockchain-funded pavilion, the installation "Fungible Non-Fungible Pavilion" has a specific focus on the concept of slowness similar to the overall theme of the biennial, which this year is “Edible; Or, the Architecture of Metabolism.”

Image courtesy iheartblob

The installation was named the de-facto winner of this year’s installation competition after another exhibitor, the fungi-inspired team called Simulaa (previously on Archinect), dropped out due to unforeseen circumstances. iheartblob nonetheless won for its crowdfunded and sourced entry that they say will empower local communities towards craftsmanship in specifically AI and NFT-based hybrid...

Mushrooms hold the key for this year’s winning proposal at the Tallinn Architecture Biennale in Estonia

2021-10-12T14:18:00-04:00

A trippy trend in building technology has taken top billing at the 6th annual Tallinn Architecture Biennale in the Baltic nation of Estonia.

Using 3D-printing technology, the Australian team of Simulaa and Natalie Alima has taken a timber-frame formwork imbued with mycelial fibers that grow to envelop the structure, allowing it to decay along an algorithmic process that, in fitting with the competition’s mandate, biologically expresses the slow passage of time.

The installation contained within ‘incubation bag’ to create ideal conditions for mycelial growth © Simulaa

With the Biennale’s theme being “Edible; Or, The Architecture of Metabolism,” the concept offers a very wavy way of considering how materials and methods can be better used to help buildings adapt to local environments through projects that “take a long, romantic and human-centric view towards construction technology.”

Section illustrating the ‘forest’-like qualities of the installation © Simulaa

“This project curates an ...

Finalists Announced for the Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB) Installation Competition

2021-06-07T20:41:00-04:00

"12 teams to enter the 2nd stage of the competition..." "The 2022 TAB installation calls for proposals that take a long, romantic, and human centric view towards construction technology, demonstrating designs and processes that extend and expand learning and mastery, traditional craftsmanship and analogue fabrication, repurposing and reuse of local materials, human invention and improvisation, environmental adaptation and responsiveness, wonderment, and delight."

The Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB) Installation Competition has announced 12 shortlisted teams out of 119 entries from 41 countries to continue on to the 2nd stage of the competition.

TAB 2017 Installation by Gilles Retsin. Image by NAARO.

Adrien Rigobello, Tom Svilans, Phil Ayers
Andy Watts, Alicia Nahmad Vazquez
Simulaa
Barry Wark, Richard Beckett, Levent Ozruh, Jan Contala, Phillip Schwaderer
EmTech, Buro Happold
Ezio Blasetti, Danielle Willems
Francesco Lipari, Arturo Tedeschi
IHEARTBLOB
Joseph Choma, Jefferson Ellinger, Wesam Al Asali
Katya Bryskina, Dmitry Morozov
Roberto Naboni, Riccardo La Magna, Aljaz Kramberger, Anija Kunić, Luca Breseghello, Alessandro Zomparelli
Studio KINC, Igor Siddiqui

Researchers develop method to 3D-print inexpensive houses from peat

2018-07-25T15:07:00-04:00

Cut peat blocks were already being used for building houses thousands of years ago. Now, scientists at the University of Tartu have developed a material which could make it possible to print energy-efficient houses out of milled peat and oil shale ash using a 3D printer.

"As peat and oil shale ash are not very expensive, house builders would be especially happy about the price of the material. According to Liiv, scientists calculated that the cost for the construction of a house shell printed from this material with a floor surface of 100–150 square meters could be about €5,000 (compared to the construction of the shell of a framed building of equivalent size, which would cost about ten times more). Thus, peat material could be used to build a very cheap house with an energy class A."

H/T Global Construction Review

Estonia is the first country to offer free public transit nationwide

2018-06-07T14:01:00-04:00

Tallinn, known for its digital government and successful tech startups, is often referred to as Europe’s innovation capital. Now celebrating five years of free public transport for all citizens, the government is planning to make Estonia the first free public transport nation.

Pop-Up City's Regina Schröter interviews the Head of the Tallinn European Union Office, Allan Alaküla, about Estonia's plans to expand the successful fare-free public transport model from the capital to the entire country on July 1: "Before introducing free public transport, the city center was crammed with cars. This situation has improved — also because we raised parking fees. When non-Tallinners leave their cars in a park-and-ride and check in to public transport on the same day, they can’t only use public transport for free but also won’t be charged the parking fee. We noticed that people didn’t complain about high parking fees once we offered them a good alternative."

A number of other European cities, most notably Paris, also offer, or are considering, free public transport to ease traffic, reduce pollution, and boost local businesses.

Previously: Can offering free rides invigorate public transit?

“Weak Monument”: Estonia's 2018 Venice Biennale Pavilion examines the implicit politics of everyday architectural forms

2018-05-10T15:35:00-04:00

For the 2018 Venice Biennale, Estonia's pavilion, “Weak Monument”, explores the explicit representation of the monument and the implicit politics of everyday architectural forms.

Curated by Laura Linsi, Roland Reemaa and Tadeáš Říha, the exhibition takes over the former Santa Maria Ausiliatrice church in Venice with pavement and a monument-like concrete wall that divides the exhibition space in two. As visitors cross through the wall, they'll find a collection of photos, drawings, and models of Estonian and European examples of “weak monuments”. They will then encounter a “wall altar”.

“Monuments reside on the margin of the architectural discipline while directly embodying some of its most central qualities, such as relation to the site, delimitation of public space and capacity for representation,” the curatorial team explains.

“In Estonia, the notion of monument appears as a foreign intruder. Its pre...

Can offering free rides invigorate public transit?

2014-01-30T19:27:00-05:00

Last January, Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, did something that no other city its size had done before: It made all public transit in the city free for residents. [...] One year later, this city of 430,000 people has firmly established itself as the leader of a budding international free-transit movement. [...] What’s less clear on the first anniversary of free transit in Tallinn is whether it has actually changed commuting behavior all that much.

As it turned out, Tallinn's bold move last year to offer free-transit to its residents did not have a very dramatic effect on its own ridership. But the experiment has clarified some subtle issues in public transit:

Free-transit as a "second-best pricing scheme": if a city wants to curb drivers and increase public-transit use, it may be best to de-incentivize driving, rather than incentivizing public transit. Fees on drivers and increased taxes for car ownership may be more effective in getting folks on public transit than offering free rides.
Price affects accessibility, but not necessarily use: This may seem obvious, but without price-barriers, the unemployed could commute through all of Tallinn and increase access to potential employers. Transit ridership grew the most in Lasnamäe, a densely populated area with high unemployment.
Free-rides for everyone may not be sustainable, but it can still be good policy for some demographics. Cities like Hasselt, Belgium and Chengdu in China ha...

STREET 2020, Tallinn Vision Competition Winners

2011-08-08T15:14:08-04:00

The winning entries have been announced in the Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB) Vision Competition STREET 2020. Organized by the Estonian Architecture Centre and the City of Tallinn, this open international competition invited students, architects, landscape architects and planners to focus on the hybrid issue of 'Landscape Urbanism' applied to Estonia's capitol city: battling heavy traffic congestion while improving the quality of urban life for pedestrians and cyclists.