094: europan 10 tallinna võidutöö

summary: europan 10 winning entry for the site in tallinn, conceived by the young amsterdam-based practice xml. the office is ran by max cohen de lara & david mulder. along with their 1st prize in tallinn, xml also received honorary mentions in both munich and madrid. over the period of twenty years that the europan competition has been held, xml is the first office to be successful in three respective sites at the same time. full description of their winning entry is to follow below.


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tänavune europani noorte arhitektide konkurss tõi tallinna võistlusalale üksteisega mõõtu võtma 44 meeskonda. võistlusalaks oli valitud maalapp linnahalli, kultuurikatla ja tulevase raehoone vahel, eesmärgiks muuta ala linnainimestele atraktiivseks. võidupreemia määrati noorele hollandi arhitektuuribüroole xml, kelle töö näeb ette kahte lihtsavormilist turuhoonet ning hoonestamata alade puudega katmise.

xml-il tasub edaspidi silm peal hoida. lisaks võidule tallinnas määrati neile äramärkimised ka müncheni ja madridi konkurssidel, kusjuures ühe autorkonna niisugune edu oli europani 20-aastase ajaloo jooksul esmakordne.

olgu veel mainitud, et näitus kõigist tallinna konkursitöödest avatakse arhitektuurimuuseumi galeriil 11. märtsil 2010.

nüüd siis konkursi, võidutöö autorite ja töö enda tutvustuste kallale.


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CATEGORY:
urban design / landscape architecture
LOCATION:
Tallinn, city centre
POPULATION:
401 000
STUDY SITE:
14,9 ha
SITE OF PROJECT:
3,4 ha
SITE PROPOSED BY:
the municipality of Tallinn
OWNERS OF THE SITE:
the City of Tallinn, Mere Kinnisvara OÜ, Prokapital
COMMISSION AFTER COMPETITION:
aimed at realisation within the project site and possibly some interventions in the study site.

ASSIGNMENT:

The competition site or project site will become an important public space connecting several important public buildings. The area has high potential of becoming an actively used public space. The project site is also part of the continuous waterfront promenade that is planned to run along the whole 27 km long coastline of Tallinn. How to compose the coastline and the water edge so that it would be attractive for people to use? The existing concert hall building (i.e. Linnahall - jk) itself works as an attractive public space. The competition entries are expected to give solution to a truly new urban public space that would connect the public buildings, provide pedestrian connections to the city centre and offer ideas on different open air activities all year round. For the study site or the site of reflection ideas of how to turn a complicated traffic node that takes up a lot of urban public space into a more efficiently functioning area are very welcome.

CITY STRATEGY:
Tallinn has a well preserved and defined old town centre which is located quite close to the competition site. The new city centre is developing along the north-south direction parallel to the old town. The new development is rapidly approaching the sea and the harbour area. This correlates with the city’s intent to connect the city centre to the waterfront. An important decision was made by the city to locate the new administration building close to the water hoping that it would help to shift the functioning city centre towards the desired direction and trigger new activities around the new building. In 2011 Tallinn will be the Cultural Capital of Europe. Within the Cultural Capital program one of the aims is to create a “cultural kilometre” along the waterfront which the competition area would be part of.

foto: ?

fotod: ?

selle ülilaheda foto autorit tahaks küll teada!

AUTHORS:

XML is a contemporary cultural practice specialized in Architecture, Research and Urbanism. XML is interested in developing architectures that both reflect and provoke contemporary ways of life. By understanding program organization as a key strategy within each project XML aims for establishing new relations between buildings and society, the projects of the office are fuelled by a reflection on the contemporary city as source of cultural production.

From its base in Amsterdam XML has been involved in worldwide cross-disciplinary projects with an emphasis on cultural analysis. The office has won several prizes and is led by two partners, Max Cohen de Lara (b 1979) and David Mulder (b 1980).

photo copyright: XML

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

Green Cement

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, which was a prelude to Estonia’s independence, the country has experienced a period of turbulent growth. With a capital that has been characterized by the New York Times as ‘the Silicon Valley on the Baltic Sea,’ Estonia’s G.D.P. has boomed and the number of new construction projects has multiplied since the beginning of the 21st century. Paradoxically, this period of strong economic growth and intense building activity has seen a parallel decrease in the population of Tallinn. Now that the global recession is strongly impacting on Estonia’s economy and construction activities have slowed down significantly, this may be a decisive moment for Tallinn to evaluate its situation and utilize this breathing space to formulate new urban scenarios for the future.

Tallinn Population vs. Estonia Growth Rate vs. Building Permits
1991-2009

A quick analysis shows that, for Tallinn, the economic boom and the explosive increase in building activity of the past 15 years has materialized in the form of urban sprawl. Construction has been particularly strong at the periphery, and the majority of the city’s population now lives at a considerable distance from the city center. A notable aspect of Tallinn’s urban sprawl is that there is little variation in the value of its real estate and few locations are considered distinctly more attractive than others. Another important feature is the steady decline in residential density over a period of 50 years, a decline that has accelerated since the country’s independence.

Urban Growth (1990-2006)

Hence, after 40 years of communist social engineering and urban development followed by the post-independence construction outburst, Tallinn’s sprawling urban plan is characterized by two extremes: areas with new, primarily self-referential conditions alternated with vast expanses of no-man’s land. The city has recently formulated the ambition to strengthen its relationship to the surrounding water. However, in view of current economic and demographic conditions, it may be argued that this is not the most sustainable and realistic scenario. An attempt to fill the city’s voids with any kind of program is highly dubious, and it is the zones between urban area and water in particular that consist of meaningless stretches of unused space, former military terrain, and dockland areas.

Urban condition: automatically allocating programs to all undefined areas within a sprawling city means that scant available resources must be distributed over a multitude of needs. Instead, this proposal focuses on a strategy of creating contrasts.

Here, differences between various parts of the city are reinforced by filling undefined areas with woodlands. These woodlands will have a major impact on Tallinn, in various ways. Naturally changing with the seasons, the woods transform stretches of no-mans’s land into meaningful spaces. By filling no-man’s land with woodlands, locations that are to be developed in the future will have added value and buildings realized on these locations will be special, regardless of their architecture; each fragment in the landscape becomes unique instead of disappearing into urban oblivion. Depending on future trends, certain urban areas may be allocated to the woodlands, or vice versa. Thus, the city will have room for expansion and reduction, all within the same organic system. The woodlands provide the ‘Green Cement’ needed to bind Tallinn’s fragmented structure, giving consistency to the city’s urban fabric. A clear contrast between the city and the woodlands is an affirmation of the true identity of Tallinn as capital of Estonia, where over 50% of the land is covered by forests. The Green Cement scenario allows Tallinn to grow -- literally -- into a modern metropolis characterized by clearly delineated public spaces rather than an endless sprawl of indistinctness.

Strategy: filling undefined areas with woodlands.

One of the fragments in this new urban landscape is the cluster that contains the Cultural Factory, the Linnahall, the new City Administration Building and the new Market Twins. The Market Twins are two rectangular generic halls, which house the fish market, and the food and design markets respectively. The modest architecture of the halls is complemented by interiors in which market activities are organized through the placement of stalls and daylighting. In the fish market hall, the long lines of the fish stalls follow the shoreline and the hall’s daylighting runs in the same direction, providing a clear overview in an essentially chaotic marketplace. The public space created by the area between the fish market hall and the Linnahall becomes part of the new route along the shoreline, which can be seen from this viewpoint through the filter of lanes between the lined fish stalls. The second hall houses the design market and the food market. Here, daylighting is organized in a gradient that consists of a variety of apertures. Like open spaces in the woods where sunlight shines through, the concentration of programmatic activities at various spots in this hall is accentuated by daylighting. The placement of market stalls and furniture helps to highlight various areas within this space. Besides the food market and the design market, this hall houses a restaurant, a small conference center and a creative workshop area. These programs will allow the hall to develop into an informal civic hall that complements the formal City Administration Building located across the street.

Informal Civic Hall

Fishmarket

Clearly delineated by Green Cement, the project creates a public space in which the Linnahall, the City Administration Building and the Market Twins become genuine actors, each with their own roles. The clear demarcation of the boundaries through the adjacent woodlands allows the site to develop into a meaningful public space, with a program that will be truly rooted in Tallinn’s urban fabric.

Plan