Madli Kaljuste
- Faculty of Architecture
- Architecture and Urban Design
- ma
- Architects’ and Engineers’ Building
- Tutor(s): Raul Kalvo, Martin Melioranski
This project takes a baffled look at the existing environment. Project is situated in an 80s office building in the heart of Tallinn, also known as the Architects’ and Engineers’ Building — as it housed three biggest planning offices in Soviet Estonia. The building served in its original function for a mere 10 year period.
At the moment the building is at the final threshold of its life. It is soon to be demolished. This is a status it has beared, or enjoyed for more than 10 years. Essays and remarks on planning, projecting, time, modernism, heritage problems, maintenance and obsolescence shed light on the difficulty of being in the present.
Observations and mapping of the Architects’ building today show it`s temporary and uncertain existence. A moment is captured where on one hand everything seems to be on halt, but on the other, the ambiguity of the situation has allowed diverse activities and odd programmatic plurality to emerge.
Faulty projections of the building show existing plurality through often used but nevertheless distorting lenses of projective geometry. Projections project possible spatial interventions. Though all the projections start off with pragmatic considerations they soon go off-trail. Instead of being clear representations of a conceivable project, they are reflections of the very moment where I – the architect – am reducing life’s complexity and ambiguity to a clinical CAD drawing.
The decision and the expectation of being demolished locks a building. Doing any radical changes is a waste of time and money. But it can also be viewed as a moment where anything could be done. The found mindset in this project (and this spring) is that the present moment might elongate itself to the future for longer than planned. The master thesis is an attempt to find possibilities in the moment that is forever eclipsed by the impending future(s).