Research areas:

In my practice three main fields are combined together: architectural design, research and

teaching.

 

Architectural design

I have been a practicing architect for 17 years and since 1999 I have a small studio with maximum staff of 5. I have been lead architect for ca 140 commisions of which 24 have been built. Half of the commissions have been architectural design and the rest consist of urban planning schemes, interior and furniture design, installations and written work. My early built key works are Niitvälja Golf Club (with Mai Shein) and Veskimöldre Kindergarten (with Andres Lember), but recently I consider key works a group of designs of private houses and summer retreats for non urban sites in Estonia. Those small scale buildings, both built and unbuilt and of which some are reconstructed old farm houses are strongly connected to my research on rural landscapes and buildings.

 

Research

My research deals with methods on development and describing the spatial structure on Lahemaa National Park case in Northern Estonia. The research field is architecture and history of settlements in non urban rural landscapes. In my research I deal with protected heritage driven by politics which needs rethinking from the architects point of view. My aim is to develop methods for describing historic spatial structures and visualize their architectural potential. My research is based on archive work, analyzing of maps, 3d modeling of landscapes and fieldworks on rural sites. In 2012 I enrolled into doctorate program of Estonian Academy of Arts where I have conducted my research in academic framework. Key works from my research are published analysises of spatial structures of North Estonian villages and composing a brief for architectural competition for housing at Lahemaa National Park (with Kaidi Õis). My research is deeply related to tutoring and teaching at Estonian Academy of Arts.

 

Teaching

My teaching began in 2004 with conducting annual measuring and documenting workshops at Lahemaa National Park, North Estonia for the first year students of architecture. In these workshops students have had to observe traditional rural landscapes and villages and measure and document old farm dwellings in scale. Altogether 97 dwellings have been measured and documented in four Lahemaa villages.

Since 2006 I have been key organizer and tutor at the building workshop “Shelter” for 1- year architecture students. Each year a team of 12 to 15 are given a task to build one of spring semester design projects in full scale in ten days. My tasks included helping to organize the funding, tutoring the process of implementing the design, providing the location for the installation and tutoring the building process. I have tutored the building of 10 shelters. View the gallery here

Since 2009 I have been giving lectures in the course “Introduction to Architecture”. The course consists of field trips and lectures based on research and architect’s practice. A key assignment of analysis titled “A Good Place” is given in which students have to deal with emotional and intangible data of site and relationship between space and human being. As a result students have produced altogether 77 short films about their sites and published them on internet.