ARCHITECTURE IN TALLIN, ESTONIA

The Faculty of Architecture is in a beautiful historical building in the old town of Tallin. Should help the students appreciate good architecture

I was invited to come to the Tallin Academy of the Arts to meet the Master students in architecture and landscape architecture. The students demonstrated their schemes and we discussed where they want to take their work for the final defence of their project in early June. I have done this a number of times before, coming in as an external examiner to evaluate and I hope motivate the students. This is a common order in design and architectural school where we have external and foreign people to help with securing the quality of the projects and the education in a way. The external visitor is not a police person but a friend that can help with advicing the faculty in what is going really well and where there might be areas that the faculty could address.

The third year studio. This is what I love with design atmosphere and hope our school in Maputo displays such energy soon

I have been going to Tallin quite regularly, when time allows, the first time 7 or 8 years ago. I have always admired the academy, it is ambitious and the development of the teaching programs are taking great steps. They have great strength in animation, graphic design (some of the heroes of art and graphic design were Estonians), the fashion department is doing great things and architecture is a stable and strong education that I can recommend to anyone who wants to have good master education. The academy is a member of the Cirrus Network which I am the leader of and they are going to run the Meeting of Teachers Conference next January.

It is interesting to reflect how international the architecture has become. Number one, all the students are fluent in English, which was not the case when I started coming there. The professors have been ambitious in visiting foreign projects and they follow well what is going on. At the same time the faculty keeps its strong philosophical base that I met when I came there for the first time.

I went to the opening of an exhibition of student project done by First year students. Here they are standing on the balcony. Young architects with the future of the Estonian environment ahead of them

I am going to return in early June to examine the projects and really look forward to meeting again some of the potentially interesting projects that I met this time. Oh! And also of course the very sympathetic students and professors.

It was really lots of snow in Tallin. My friend Juri told me it had been like this for weeks and it has reduced by a third already

April 1, 2010   Posted in: DESIGN