The project is an exploration in creating a connection, physically linking the city and sea and a spiritual threshold for the youth of Tallinn, revealing their interconnectedness with the environment. Through a series of revelations, the building becomes a religious experience, where the presence of sea is magnified and brought closer to man.

Pause
My project is a pause.
In architecture, many different buildings exist in the same realm. A pavilion, community centre, airport. The list goes on. But can architecture also be designed to function as a pause? A small break in between the traffic? Or a small break in your daily routine?
The project is situated at three different locations along the edge of Tallinn’s medieval centre, where the old city meets newer developments. A sudden boundary, without a threshold designed to ease the shift from one to the next. These sites were selected based on the various intensities and intervals of public transport. The first location, next to the old town and the Viru hotel, serves as the main site. The second sits in the middle of traffic, beside Freedom Square and surrounded by a three-lane road on either side, with buses and trams passing frequently. It offers a stepping stone to the city’s newer parts. The third is placed in the park, bridging two green areas and creating a safe place to wait for transport at night.
In a city centre challenged by layered scales and diverse architectural languages, the project responds with a system designed entirely at the scale of the human body. These scales are found in material choices, subtle height differences, and depths that shape the walls, elevations and surroundings. It mediates the differences in scale, people, and spatial languages.
Built on the idea of small implementations to create a larger impact, Pause offers a space not just for transit, but for presence. It functions as a social threshold. Part shelter, part meeting point, part memory. An anchor where people pause, reflect, and reconnect with their city and with one another.
Together with this framework, soft curves shape the landscape. They guide and embrace visitors, leading them toward the various functions embedded in the site. The canopy enhances this embrace, creating a space where people can wait, spend time, and meet with others.
Rooted in Estonia’s local materials and shaped by the colours of its seasons, the project suggests a pathway for new locations to come. What does it mean if half of a site is lowered by a torso? If the step toward the coffee bar shifts up or down by one foot? These small spatial gestures offer another layer, a new dimension that enhances everyday use.
Pause becomes a breathing point in the city. Not monumental, but a necessity.

The project is situated between the vast and repurposed harbour industry area and the intimate scale of the Kalamaja neighbourhood. By introducing a building that serves the local community, it activates an area that was once detached from the urban tissue and dominated by tourism.

At the heart of the site lies a previously abandoned building, now repurposed as a public hub. A newly added circulation tower connects this core to the adjacent sports building and swimming pool.

The volume of the swimming pool is set lower to preserve visual and pedestrian connections to the sea, and to respect the presence of the existing building, whose prominent elevation once defined the site. On the opposite side, the sports hall asserts itself through a distinctive wooden exoskeleton. This expressive structure not only gives the building its character but also provides the necessary stability, allowing the sport hall and gym to remain fully open to connect with the surroundings.

A public, transparent ground floor opens up towards the entrance square, encouraging interaction before and after sporting. The building was designed with human scale in mind, guided by twelve key principles that shape spatial experience. Among them, depth, fragmentation, configuration, circulation, and transitions in scale played a crucial role in informing the design.

The Sport and Leisure Centre proposes a new way of embedding human scale into large-scale architecture. At the same time, it reconnects the site—both vertically and horizontally—to Tallinn’s urban fabric, activating the once detached area of the city

The projection introduces a systematic approach to transform incomplete concrete skeletons in the south of Italy into latent villas, addressing the wasteful obsolescence of these structures in the context of regional rural abandonment and exploring the perennial tension of order and freedom in architecture.

The project is bound to existing ideals and resources available in the south
but exceeds these by the projection of a clear, central intervention that structures the perimeter. Through imposing this absolute order, existing potentials are realized, maintaining the structures inherent openness as latent tolerance.

In light of the current trend of redeveloping former industrial sites in Tallinn, this project aims to address the potential architectural quality and unique spatial experience of the industrial heritages, and to utilize these qualities for the improvement of public inclusiveness of the newly developed neighborhoods.

On the early stage of this project, an analysis of the current redeveloped neighborhoods in Tallinn was done, focusing on their building composition, public access, as well as specific architectural technique adopted to highlight the historic meanings. Besides, a study on this exact building in Krulli Kvartal is also done about its special architectural quality, which are the repetitions, regularity, extensive footprint as well as the currently inadequate climate protection.

By the interplay of these qualities, a vocational school on this site is designed, which provides the future neighborhood with several regular target users. Its required programs has also paved a path for the flexibility of the use of space by both students and public users.

This design consists of 3 main blocks of buildings, which from the left hand side of the floor plan respectively are conventional learning block, interactive learning block and public gymnasium block. By situating these blocks in a parallel order and respecting the existing building conditions, 3 public space are also formed, which are the warhouse garden (top), school atrium (bottom left) and public ramp plaza (bottom right).

In terms of building technologies, this project has played with the extent of climate and sound insulation to create a spectrum of publicness and privateness. For example, the double storey workshop space in inetractive learning block has adopted a passive climate insulation, which leads to an ambiguity between the inside and outside of school and favours the extension of the use of space to the outdoor public realm.

Tallinn residents were promised a new commercial landmark on the most prominent site in their harbour in the form of a new retail shopping mall: The Porto Franco Development. But after years of delay, the city and its people are left with a colossal concrete structure, blocking direct viewing lines and impairing orientation within the harbour area. In response, the original concept of a retail shopping mall was radically reimagined: its architectural typology and characteristics were repurposed into a public mediatheque where instead of consumer goods, users now browse, test, and process information. A building that revitalizes the connection between the Harbour and the City centre of Tallinn and helps to cherish the arrival at the harbour of this Baltic capital.

The Dwellers of Väikese Rannavärava proposes a new kind of urban ecosystem within Tallinn’s Old Town—one that promotes coexistence among diverse groups by creating a system of shared resources and unique contributions. The project offers what is currently missing in the area: a cohesive, resilient neighbourhood. Through the adaptive transformation of the Väikese Rannavärava Bastion, this intervention integrates everyday life with privatized activities, revitalizing both the space and its community.

While the site was selected based on a threshold analysis that revealed a clear physical and symbolic separation from the Old Town, the design response—puncturing the site into smaller, human-scaled elements and the creation of a public square—respond directly to this condition.

I also acknowledge the ongoing debate about preserving Tallinn’s historical appearance. But, as Alatalu states, “today’s creation is tomorrow’s heritage.” I believe that new interventions—if done with sensitivity, clarity, and care—can enrich heritage rather than diminish it. The Dwellers of Väikese Rannavärava is my contribution to that evolving dialogue.

Set in the heart of Tallinn, this project addresses the challenges of spatial uniformity and the disconnection between public and private realms at the urban scale. It proposes a new framework for mixed-use development that reimagines housing as a dynamic, layered system that moves beyond the generic. At the base of the project lies a transparent urban hall: a column-free space formed by a waffle structure. This area acts as a public living room for the city, offering openness and a sense of collective ownership. It accommodates community functions, small-scale commerce, and flexible programs that invite constant reactivation by the surrounding neighborhood. Above, a green landscape - the “petri dish” - serves not only as a shared space for recreation and reflection but also as a spatial and social mediator. Rising from this platform are tree-like structural cores that support cantilevered housing units while preserving the ground level for shared use. The varied massing and fragmented volumes prevent the formation of monolithic blocks, allowing light, air, and people to flow between spaces.

This is a story about an archive that could sit in the heart of Appingedam, Groningen, commemorating two diasporic cultures which, against all the odds, found refuge in this quiet, mediaeval city.

The first Ashkenazi Jewish population saw its birth in Appingedam, Groningen in the early 17th century. Despite centuries of difficulties the community flourished in this small rural city for centuries until it was all but eliminated in the 1940s, starting with their forceful eviction to the Dutch concentration/transit camp Westerbork. My grandmother is the last survivor of this community.

After the war, Kamp Westerbork - renamed Schattenberg - saw the arrival of a new community, the Moluccans. Intended to be a temporary stay whilst the Dutch negotiated their independence as a state from Indonesia, the years saw little progress as it became evident that this temporary stay was quickly becoming permanent. In 1960 it was proclaimed that the Moluccan community would be rehoused permanently across the province of Groningen, with the first city of permanent dwelling being Appingedam. A city which can be walked across in 25 minutes now bore witness to the birth of two significant communities within the Netherlands, centuries apart. Although there could never have been any crossover (one community terminated prior to the other starting) this is the story of how to analyse the intrinsically spiritual connections between two vastly different communities, and how a new syncretic direction for commemoration - one the focuses on the power of a multiplicity of memory rather than the privacy and exclusivity of a single collective remembrance - can be brought forward.

The proposal, titled “Forum for the Built Environment,” surged in response to the observed deficiency of physical spaces conducive to reflection, gatherings, and citizen participation in the city. It was prompted by Estonia’s post- independence trajectory characterised by a shift towards digitalisation. Its primary aim is to function as a platform for democratic dialogue among Tallinn’s citizens on matters of public interest within the domain of the built environment.

Consisting of four distinct buildings, each distinguished by unique architectural features, the project encapsulates the multifaceted essence of Tallinn. These architectural variances symbolise the diversity of perspectives and identities inherent within societal structures, embodying the principles of democracy. The primary objective of Forum for the Built Environment is to establish a neutral ground for open discourse while facilitating collaboration between the city planning office and citizens, ensuring continuous engagement and dialogue. Furthermore, the project is not only experienced within the buildings but also in its outside environment. The project functions as a pathway, crossing through a city block. People can wander off and walk past different architectures. In addition, the ruinous garden is positioned on the eastern side of the project, which offers a space of tranquillity for reflection.

Functionally, the four buildings serve specific programmatic purposes: a Forum space for exhibitions and discussions, an Office for the City Architect for input and opinion gathering, an Archive housing physical and digital materials for city history research, and a children’s day-care facility to support parental engagement in civic activities.

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.

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).

The goal of this project is to join maker and artisan communities in one place. This location acts as a craftsmanship hub, catering to both artisans who sell their designs, and makers who share their knowledge with the community. Combining these two types of users stems from the idea that they can work as a complimentary unit. The artisans provide a sense of inspiration, demonstrating the beauty that can come from handcraft skills. While the makers provide the knowledge and expertise behind how things are crafted. The value of creating this kind of community is to nurture an environment of knowledge exchange and co-creation. Both program types act as nodes of inspiration for the local community to engage with skillful designers and traditional masters. Furthermore, they help remind people of the value of the handmade, and the beauty that can result from it.

The goal of the project is to be a celebration of craftsmanship in every aspect. The program, the design, the detail, and the construction are all meant to be an architecture that reflects the mastery of craft and the ingenuity of makers.

Reshaping the shopping mall into a public space - Over the last century, shopping has been transformed into an urban institution through the shopping mall. Originally designed as a meeting place for the population, it was meant to serve as a multipurpose town center that would enhance the human network of activity in the suburbs, safe from the seasons. However, since its conception, retail spaces have taken precedence over the consumer itself and their use as a ‘public space’. However, with the rise of e-commerce, the typical mall design favoring retail is struggling to compete, resulting in closures and abandonment. It is at this crossroads, that this project reconsiders the structure of the mall as a public space that sets the individual above retail and seeks to answer, ‘How the architecture of consumerism can be reshaped to create public space?’.

This project takes the Nautica Keskus mall by the ferry terminal in Tallinn, Estonia, and deconstructs
the consumerist design factors to reach its underlying presence as a public space. The existing
building is given a new rooting in its surroundings by fragmenting the mass and softening its edges.
Taking precedence from the closure of malls and their abandonment, nature is allowed to take over
and revitalize its interior. The building is transformed into an urban park creating natural wildness in an otherwise organized typology. Rather than destroying the building, a heritage approach is taken, seeing malls as a remnant of their time. Three new functions are specified in the building: public functions (library, workshop, and theater), greenhouses and open nature reflecting the Estonian landscape. The building is reused to show the varying states of possible decay, either through complete reuse of the existing, structural reuse only, or natural decay of the structure.

In the immersive environments of theme parks nothing is what it appears to be. The architecture of such places relies on architectural manipulation, new technologies and
vibrant scenes to create a pleasurescape that would prolong the visitor’s stay. Reflecting on the touristification and disneyfication of Tallinn’s Medieval city centre, ‘The Quarry Theme Park’ is a theoretical and design exploration of deceit in architecture, questioning normative understandings of value, beauty and honesty.
The project argues for the preservation of the soon-to-be-depleted Vao quarry in the avoided and rather unattractive residential area of Lasnamae and its transformation into a theme park. The theme park, situated in the central area of the quarry, is conceived as a sequence of thresholds in a loop, whose purpose is to immerse people into the world of the quarry.
The project has three main parts: the parking, the main entrance, and a typical attraction entrance.
Taking Estonia’s national material as its theme, the park aims to bring awareness of the properties, uses, value, beauty and temporality of limestone through the architecture
and the landscape of the quarry by transforming it into an imaginative landscape. It argues for the value of deceit in architecture by bringing out the qualities of theme parks to immerse, surprise, make us wonder, instill imagination and make us suspend our habits and beliefs.

Tallinna Arkaad | Project description

Tallinna Arkaad (Tallinn's Arcade) is a project situated in Uus Maailm, a subdistrict of Tallinn characterized by poorly maintained buildings and streets and a lack of commercial activities. Despite these issues, Uus Maailm is poised for redevelopment, featuring good public transport access, nearby public buildings, and an underutilized square. The self-imposed ambitions for Uus Maailm include creating distinctive architecture, high-quality public spaces, and a mixed-use environment encompassing living, working, and recreation.

The proposed development is an arcade hybridized with a courtyard along an axis linking a public square to a train terminal. This design merges two popular public space typologies and integrates commercial functions, residences, offices, an embassy, a library, and classrooms, resulting in a dynamic mixed-use complex. The facade materials—limestone, wood, and glass—highlight Tallinn’s historical context while distinguishing between the inner and outer facades of the hybrid structure.

To manage the approximately 57,600 square meter irregular building, the volume is divided into four regular sections, with the irregular 'in-between' spaces developed as atriums. These atriums serve as distinct entry points, creating autonomous building sections. A general grid of 5.4 meters was applied, with slight variations in the arcade section.

The project aims to ally with the Rotermann District in re-using parts of existing built mass to create recognizable architecture of a coherent style, contrasting in the way it treats the ruins. Its socio-urban effort is based on the understanding of what is necessary to balance out the dominant paradigm of economic growth in the quarter: Spaces for cultural stimulation that spark curiosity, foster a sense of shared responsibility, and engage locals and visitors. Complementary to the effects of mallification, Unfinishing Spaces aims to bind the fragments of space which have fallen out of time (or use) back into the fabric of contemporary architecture.

The extraordinary appears as meaningless in the lack of the ordinary. The etymology of ordinary sheds light on the orderly; referring to patterns or traits taken to be typical in the behavior of a social group. Since banality finds its way into every corner and situation using automatization processes and normal making mechanisms; it defines the majorities; nonetheless, it is the backbone that can save the extraordinary from becoming kitsch by rerouting it to the more tangible roots it stemmed from, marking a subtlety that defines the boundary between science fictions, and in-depth surreal practices. Banal Dreamscape; is a reflection, and research into the coexistence of the two contradicting forces, and the subtle combination of them using an architectural language through the exploration of each one and them together. influenced by the cinema of David Lynch, and the Lynchian adjective the project tries to reimagine everyday spaces of Dutch suburbia by the creation of objects as products of a certain space and time among the mass-produced entities with a long-lost aura. Banal Dreamscape is a critical reflection on the homogeneity of space, activity, and users in the defined, and defended mosaics of Dutch suburbia, by introducing subtle out-of-context-ness, and a more sympatric territory in the monotonous, least potent places for wonder, seldom considered as architecture and worthy of scrutiny leftovers of suburbia.

Vinex (the fourth report on spatial planning extra), an infamous, widespread, yet successful housing solution by the Dutch Ministry of Housing in its core is a Dutch suburban solution to the housing crisis. Eight hundred thousand mass-produced housing units built in ten years dislocating middle-income families from the centers to small towns surrounding them, shapes the banal context for this project. The Vinex location Eschmarke in the municipality of Enschede in particular in this case, with its border situation, reinforcing the conflict between its neighbors and German drug tourists, called for an integration of sympatric relations to host both conventional and unconventional activities within a neighborhood and to welcome the otherness and formerly sanctioned activity in such neighborhood. The formerly nuisance became a new meaningful sub-layer for the monotone context of the neighborhood in favor of a more resilient, and robust urbanity. Thus, the garage spaces, leftover spaces, and grey zones of architecture became the host to the new activity within this region. Everyday spaces of these low-importance Sub-urban spaces became the backbone for the architectural investigation that came afterward.

An architecture invested in the uniqueness of space, and the importance of atmospheres regardless of the scale of the intervention when no pre-defined value or sublime quality is present. With an eye for the details and cherishing human tangible desires through a redefinition of architectural agents on such small scales. Banal Dreamscape is a concentrated exploration of micro-adjustments to the architectural element where every line plays a defining role, that not only goes beyond the limit of the mundane but explores limits of architecture in ways that no artificial intelligence nor mass production procedure with a focus on bigger pictures and simplification of perception can create nor value. Focusing on creating subtle, bizarre situations in familiar corners of the built environment.