Inhabited Walls
Reimagining Tallinn’s City Wall as a Living Monument
C.Y. Leung (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
Willemijn Wilms Floet – Mentor (TU Delft - Situated Architecture)
N.L. Tilanus – Mentor (TU Delft - Teachers of Practice / AE+T)
Willie Vogel – Mentor (TU Delft - Teachers of Practice / A)
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Abstract
Tallinn’s medieval city wall once stood as a powerful structure of defence. It was a strong threshold that divided inside from outside, us from them. While it played a vital role in shaping the city’s historic identity, its defensive purpose has long expired. Today, much of the wall sits idle, treated primarily as a visual relic or economic asset for tourism, rather than as an active part of daily life. This project seeks to challenge that condition by reimagining the wall as a living monument. The design hopes to respect the historical and collective value of the city wall while opening new possibilities for contemporary use.
Through a series of careful interventions in the walkway, towers, and neighbouring courtyard, the design rebuilds the relationship between the city and its wall. It introduces new programs that invite everyday interaction from locals, reconnects separated sides, and repurposes the defensive geometry as a framework for gathering, learning, and cohabitation. The architecture engages the existing wall not just as a backdrop, but as a structure to inhabit, reinterpret, and build upon. Interventions are designed as a response to the city wall in terms of its spatial arrangements, materiality, structural systems, and more. At its core, the project reverses the logic of fortification: from dividing to connecting, from repelling to inviting.
It asks —
Can a wall built to separate become a path that connects?