100 MAJA/ HOUSES #La Biennale di Venezia

ESTONIA
POPULATION 1 370 000
NUMBER OF UNIQUE DESIGN PRIVATE RESIDENCES FROM ALL PRIVATE RESIDENCES 90%

Architecture is encountered by people throughout the built environment. The experience of architecture is part of everyday life, divided between many spheres and contrasts: public/private, physical/virtual and modern/classical. One of the initial stages in the experience of architecture is the life environment, which provides personal impulses that affect everyone. The private residence has always been a favorite topic for modern architecture, illustrating in its compactness and simultaneous complexity, people’s relationships with their environment and the way to shape it. The creation of private residences is also one of the most intimate forms of architecture, in which the client’s relationship with that which is being created is indivisible. Private residential architecture with it multifaceted nature raises many questions by graphically reflecting the society and its operational mechanisms. (Karen Jagodin, editor and curator of the Estonian Exhibition in the 12th Venice Architecture Biennale)

Present-day professional residential architecture is highly valued in Estonia as it is in the Nordic countries. However, if factory-built standardized solutions are very popular in the Nordic countries and relatively few unique projects are commissioned from architects, in Estonia the construction of private residences based on unique projects has been relatively popular throughout the period of re-independence. In Estonia, the architectural and structural quality of catalogue houses is relatively mediocre, and therefore, the majority of local professional architects have received a large number of commissions for private residential projects. The new Estonian residential architecture provides a cross-section of the trends of local architectural practice since the restoration of independence. (Karl-Dag Liege)

Architecture – and private residences among them – create and shape the relationships between people, as well as people’s relationships with space. The quality of architecture is not hidden in the fact that it conveys reality, but rather in its ability to arouse our imagination. (Triin Ojari)

You can view selected projects or download full pdf-catalogue from Estonian Architects website.

[Photo by Tiit Trummal from catalogue 100 MAJA/ HOUSES ]

Something is missing?

The telephone, television, video, home computers, and so forth have introduced new ways of interacting. Direct meetings in public spaces can now be replaced by indirect telecommunication. Active presence, participation, and experience can now be substituted with passive picture watching, seeing what others have experienced elsewhere. Or is that in the past already?

Abundant possibilities do exist for compensating for what has been lost. The demand for easily accessible social opportunities outside the home is growing, whether it is due to the change in family patterns, decreasing family size or great deal of free time, the spaces that are worth using, are being used. The public spaces are needed, even more now in the world of virtual communication. The city might not be a goal anymore, but a tool that will be formed by its use.

PORTFOLIO 2006 - residence

PRIVATE RESIDENCE IN MERIVÄLJA, EE
project: 2002-2006 Arhitektuuriagentuur
interior project: 2004-2006 Monika Löve
completed: 2006
area: 375m2