sep 25th, 2016 | Architectuur, Artikelen, Publicaties, Stedenbouw
Look closely at the photo below: on the far right you can just barely discern a human figure. That gives you an idea how big the new building for the Estonian National Museum is in the city of Tartu, which opens to the public next week, on Oct. 1st, 2016. It’s huge: 356 meters long, 72 meters wide, and 15 meters high at the front, sloping down gradually to just over 2 at the back. One of the world’s smallest countries now has one of the world’s biggest museums, at a cost of 75 million euro’s. The only bigger cultural building in the country is the Linnahall, built by the Soviets on the occasion of the 1980 Olympic Games.
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aug 6th, 2016 | Architectuur, Landschap, Publicaties, Stedenbouw
This is going to be the first tax optimalization landscape in Europe, maybe even in the world. It will be in a remote corner of Europe, in the northeast of Estonia, in the town of Aidu near the Russian border. Other than the country’s usual lakes and forests (about half of Estonia is covered with trees) Aidu has one unique selling point: 20 meters under the limestone in the ground, there is oil shale. To get to it, the mines have exploded tons of limestone. With this waste product, architecture firm KTA has created an impressive landscape of sculpted pyramids, ancient and futuristic at the same time. Read the article…
sep 6th, 2012 | Architectuur, Artikelen, Publicaties, Stad
How long is the life of a building? The question is the title of the Estonian contribution to the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale. It is a poignant, relevant, well-conceived investigation into the nature and the fate of the Linnahall, a humongous Soviet-era pile of concrete reminiscent of an Aztec pyramid at the harbor of Tallinn. Read the article…
