The competition brief for the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn called for a multitude of spaces with varying sizes, heights and daylight requirements to be fitted within a compact building volume on a dense urban site. The design solution to this task is inspired by a traditional approach to a similar problem in exhibition design: Displaying paintings “salon style”, i.e. frame to frame in a dense field, covering a whole wall. This kind of display emphasizes the overall collection by making each painting an allocated component. The paintings are “architecturalized”: Rather than occupying a spot on the wall, the paintings become the wall, defining the interior space as in the etching by the baroque architect Johann Dientzenhofer.

The design for the academy uses this concept three-dimensionally. The different studios, auditoriums, workshops, and faculty offices are treated as boxes with varying lengths, heights, and depths. They are assembled in a dense stack within the constraints of the site. Programs without daylight requirements, such as music recording and video screening, are situated in the core of the stack. Programs with daylight requirements, such as painting, sculpture etc. are placed along the perimeter of the stack. All boxes are open on one side, like three-dimensional picture frames, displaying their activities to the street and to the sky. Like the field of paintings, the stack of institutes celebrates the individual artistic disciplines as a distinct and yet integral part of the academy.

The structure of the building consists of interlocking horizontal and vertical concrete slabs, arranged in an irregular three-dimensional grid. The compartments of the grid vary in length, depth and height to accommodate the different programs. The structural cells are programmatically neutral and internally flexible to allow for future programmatic changes.

Type: Unbuilt
Place: Tallinn
Year: 2008
Collaboration: Daniel Schütz, Georg Windeck
Team: Anna Zagol