This graduation project focuses on repurposing Tallinn’s abandoned Soviet-era Linnahall building, aiming to transform its deteriorated ice rink section into a vibrant market. To align with Tallinn’s vision of creating a dynamic waterfront, the project reimagines the ice rink’s function to preserve its public and cultural significance. A market is proposed as an ideal new use, enhancing public access and cultural symbolism while revitalizing the area. The renovation strategy includes enhancing the building’s openness and connectivity. By combining wood with the original concrete and steel materials, the design will balance historical preservation with modern warmth, creating a welcoming market atmosphere. This project aims to set a precedent for Linnahall’s full restoration, turning it into a lively public space that enriches Tallinn’s coastal environment.

This graduation project focuses on repurposing Tallinn’s abandoned Soviet-era Linnahall building, aiming to transform its deteriorated ice rink section into a vibrant market. To align with Tallinn’s vision of creating a dynamic waterfront, the project reimagines the ice rink’s function to preserve its public and cultural significance. A market is proposed as an ideal new use, enhancing public access and cultural symbolism while revitalizing the area. The renovation strategy includes enhancing the building’s openness and connectivity. By combining wood with the original concrete and steel materials, the design will balance historical preservation with modern warmth, creating a welcoming market atmosphere. This project aims to set a precedent for Linnahall’s full restoration, turning it into a lively public space that enriches Tallinn’s coastal environment.

This is an extension project for the radio building complex (Raadiomaja) in Tallinn as a multimedia studio providing both supplementary facilities for the staff and communal spaces for nearby residents. Through sensitive treatment of material, integrated design of sound, light, and nature, and principles of order and proportion, the project tried to provide an apolitical perspective for people to understand the monumental value in Raadiomaja and thereby Tallinn city. At the same time, it creates a warm and peaceful place where people can enjoy art, music, and social activities. One of the most important concerns of the design is the T-shaped threshold space in between sheltered by an adapted cassette ceiling structure. It carries multiple climate strategies including acoustic, lighting, and ventilation and guides the circulation of different groups of users, realizing both functional and aesthetic values.

This architectural design project aims to celebrate Estonia’s timber culture by reintroducing timber into Tallinn’s urban coastal zone. Despite Estonia’s prominence in Europe’s engineered wood industry, 90% of its timber is exported as a cheap commodity rather than enhancing local architecture. This project addresses contemporary challenges like sustainability and urban densification, proposing a timber-based solution that integrates the natural qualities of wood with human-scaled residential architecture. Located in Kalasadama, between the Linnahall and an old fishing harbour, the project revitalizes the area’s industrial character. It reimagines three building volumes, oriented to create car-free streets linking the city to the sea. This pedestrian-oriented space contrasts with Tallinn’s car-centric planning, fostering a lively urban atmosphere with mobility hubs and public squares. The seaside zone emphasizes natural coastal qualities, providing a habitat for wildlife and a retreat for residents. The ‘Tallinn Timber’ buildings feature an outer skin that showcases modern timber construction techniques and an inner street that promotes social interaction. The outer facades layer various timber methods, creating a buffer zone that pre-heats air and provides private balconies. The inner facades and roofs offer a more intimate, sunlit space for residents. Apartments are designed with modular systems produced in local wood workshops, connecting residents to the area’s workers. These spaces balance private and open areas, ensuring functionality and comfort while promoting community engagement.

An architectural exploration set in Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, on how to develop a vacant- and unfinished concrete structure in a cooperative and bottom-up way into a mixed-use living environment that provides people and their communities with more agency to shape their physical environment and their lives. Distilling principles for agency from research through reading and writing, analysing precedents and doing design research resulting in the design of an incremental-, modular-, flexible- and self-built system that facilitates the infill of the failed Porto Franco development at the harbour of Tallinn. Supposed to be 150.000 m² commercial space but has never finished because of a corruption scandal over which the government fell and the prime minister had to step down. Leaving the city with an unfinished- and unused space and an opportunity to redefine the role of the architect and the way in which we develop the environment around us.

MarketHouse is a hybrid building in the soviet microrayon of Mustakivi, Lasnamae, that integrates residential and commercial spaces, creating a micro-economy system of production and consumption. This system elevates individuals, making them dignified and self-sufficient, while also fostering social interactions and a sense of belonging within their local community. Integrating commercial shops into Mustakivi can significantly contribute to street animation, a quality that is lacking in the streets of the site. These shops attract foot traffic and create a sense of bustling activity. Furthermore, they contribute to the local economy, create job opportunities, and enhance the overall liveliness of the area. By promoting entrepreneurship and local businesses, Mustakivi can develop its unique identity and character, distinguishing it as a vibrant and dynamic neighborhood. For my urban and architectural configuration, I found inspiration in the mat building typology, particularly drawing from North African cities and traditional patterns, whose forms, geometries, and spatial configurations echo the lively essence of animated cities. The volumes of MarketHouse follow a mat grid, which I’ve carefully manipulated to harmonize with the surrounding perimeter, in a combination of different and pure geometries.

Our notion of the public sphere is inherently tied to Western ideas of democracy, as the domain where political decisions are being debated. However, the implosion of official communism and the consequent neoliberal onslaught have fundamentally altered the conception of public space. The availability of space in which public roles can be performed has been drastically reduced, as large organisations strive for political compromises with the state and with each other excluding the public whenever possible. However, spaces near symbols of national importance are inherently charged with political meaning, allowing citizens to position their claims for or against their symbolic values. In Tallinn, the castle on Toompea hill still accommodates political power (government offices and the parliament), and the conservational approach at this UNESCO world heritage site preserves the medieval hierarchies. The open spaces surrounding the Old Town – the ring of old fortifications - are allocated for recreational use only, including private, commercialized venues as the result of the privatization process in the 90s. Therefore, politically charged events happen elsewhere, detached from the venues of the formal public sphere which, I argue, constitutes a democratic deficit in spatial terms. Stages of Democracy explores how the immediate vicinity of the Estonian Parliament can be transformed through architectural interventions to accommodate spaces appropriate for performative representation, proposing a novel approach to design public spaces in historically, culturally, and ecologically important locations. The proposed design aims to build upon the traditions of the site rather than replacing them; nationalising the private sports fields opens the opportunity to add to its uses by providing an appropriable infrastructure for public events. The main architectural intervention is a new theatre, which provides a protected indoor environment for the square to remain usable all year round. Built along an existing retaining wall and partially carved into the hill, the building’s volume is carefully placed to minimise its impact both on the available space for public gatherings and the ecology of the site. The external appearance of the theatre is defined by a large colonnade, which grants the square its public essence. The retractable seating units of the auditorium can be rearranged for various stage layouts and can be rolled out between the columns onto the square for events. The roughly treated bricks of the facade form an interlocking pattern, as if the monolithic Toompea hill got fragmented to little pieces, which then reassembled to form something greater than the sum of their parts. Atop the building, a tower serves as a beacon for ‘looking the president in the eye’, and as an appropriable infrastructure for the public to present their claims using the castle as a backdrop. Two basic elements of architecture, the column and the tower characterise the project. At a place which is about the physical presence of humans, about seeing bodies and being seen, these vertical elements are important reference points. As suggested by the etymology of words like ‘capital’ (from late Latin capitellum ‘little head’), their origins lie in comparisons to the human body, and therefore relate the human scale (bodies) to the architectural (column) and the urban (tower).

My project is an adaptive reuse architectural project of an existing warehouse supermarket into a film production house sited in Lasnamäe, the Soviet built district of Tallinn, Estonia. The design encompasses all programs necessary for the complete film making process, including a 2164 sq.m soundstage with a clear height of 14m. Besides being an infrastructure, one third of the building area is dedicated to the public with programs such as a winter garden, exhibition spaces, café and restaurant. The Southern façade of the building also acts as a cinema screen for a drive-in theatre in its expansive car parking area.

The sauna in Estonian culture is seen as a necessity of life, an instinct. It is the biggest social network in Estonia and the oldest. The sauna is a place where Estonian people meet, reconnect, and share on a physical and spiritual level. By being naked in this heat, one re-experiences its body, to reconnect the physical, mental, and spiritual relationship with one-self, others, and nature. Whereas gentrification is on the rise in the Kopli area it is important to create spaces where local people can meet, socialize, relax and thrive in there neighborhood. To have a space where they feel connected with themselves, the sea, nature, and their surroundings. The chosen location near the sea has the possibility of connecting people and water. People need each other and nature to thrive. The site-specific design of these four buildings allows the people of Tallinn to reconnect with themselves, each other, and nature in a mental, physical and spiritual way. The saunas and its buildings function as a place of sensorial reconnection, through materials, nature, and social facilities.

This project investigated ways to reinvent and reinsert value into functionless, unimportant objects and places. The site chosen - Maleva Quarter, was formerly a brick manufacturing facility that was part of the Soviet military production ecosystem in Kopli. After Estonia’s independence, the factory facilities were fragmented and left behind as a collection of odd spaces. Thus, a recycled brick factory was proposed to reintroduce the material flows that existed in the past and insert relevance to the surrounding fringe spaces. The methodology utilised was urban mining, which involves reclaiming construction waste and turning it into productive architectural components. The design exploration was centred around available materials in the area, resulting in a material-focused design, much like spolia - where the structure of old buildings drives the project’s visual and structural expression. Four building strategies were outlined depending on the structural systems of the existing buildings, the desired spatial quality and the characteristics of waste materials catalogued. In conclusion, this project aims to encourage a more sustainable and resource-efficient practice in architecture amidst the depletion of building resources. Adopting this mindset could lead to more resilient and adaptive urban environments that honour their past while innovatively preparing for the future.