Nearly ten exhibitions from Estonia and elsewhere have been brought together in the historic Baltic Station Departure Pavillion. The city topics will be opened for big and small visitors by the “Human Cities" exhibition, the exhibition of the Aalto Exit Architectural School, the iF Design Talent Award, the Kalamaja community exhibition based on the book “Kalamaja is in the Air” and children's drawings exhibition about their ideal city. The exhibition "Dialogue" of Haapsalu Graphic Design Festival will also be shown. Visitors will be able to see the relaxation capsule HÄLO completed under the Human Cities project. For children, an area has been created in the Baltic station where they can build their own city.
Of course, in the Baltic Station Departure Pavillion, there is also a cozy cafe and an area where you can relax.
Human Cities
As the world is changing, we are faced with new paradigms. Rapid urbanisation has led to more than half of the world’s population now living in cities. Cities will need to find ways to accommodate this growth. They will also need to seek solutions for a range of other challenges: economic and cultural globalisation, environmental crises, inter-city competition to attract investments and changes to the ways people live, work and spend their leisure time. All this means that cities are facing a new reality.
This is the context in which, 2014-2018, Human Cities Challenging the City Scale has questioned the scale and co-creation of the contemporary city. Based on a concept created in 2006 by Brussels-based international creative consultancy Pro Materia, the project is now managed by Cité du design Saint-Etienne.
The project was co-funded by the European Commission's Creative Europe / Culture Programme and has involved 12 partners from 11 European cities: Tallinn, London, Brussels, Belgrade, Cieszyn, Saint-Etienne, Graz, Helsinki, Bilbao, Ljubljana and Milan. The partners included universities, design centres and creative design consultancies.
They shared a common goal: to identify practice that challenges the way cities are co-designed. In 4 years the project has seen a rich programme of activities and outputs: an investigation of 90 state-of-the-art case studies, collected in a book; 9 co-creative sessions, 18 experiments in 13 cities, 12 international workshops, 11 international conferences, 6 master classes, 9 exhibitions.
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HÄLO
hääl + halo + häll + hallo
Dear passer-by - do you need a break to relax your mind and rest your body?
Then take a deep breath and take some time to relax. This is for you.
In the framework of a “Human Cities” European Union co-operation project, the Estonian team has started to develop a relaxing rest capsule named HÄLO. It is planned to place HÄLO in crowded places in urban areas such as airports or public indoor parks in the atriums of modern shopping centers and office buildings. The content of the idea is to allow people to take a break from the turmoil of the city and accelerate recovery from mental overload. The goal of HÄLO is to promote the importance of a break and relaxation, to maintain mental and physical health and to demonstrate the importance of design in creating a high-level material and sensory environment. The duration of a séance is approximately 20 min.
Disaini autorid: Martin Melioranski, Jan Graps, Ken RuutAalto the EXIT School of Architecture
The Exit School of Architecture project examines shared local identities and meanings in new Finnish architecture. It looks at the works’ participatory methods to find what aspects of local culture and aesthetics are embedded in the design process and the final product. The exhibition demonstrates shared social and aesthetic values and reasoning behind the present Nordic Noir architecture in Finland.
There are present 14 recently completed projects and 6 diploma works that abandon standardized ways of building to find more meaningful, individual solutions to design problems in contemporary cities and landscapes while retaining shared aesthetic values of solitude, simplicity, and closeness to nature in materials and spatial expression.
––HGDF International competition.exhibition DIALOGUE
HGDF focuses on developments of the poster art and creative signature in graphic design work. At the international competition DIALOGUE participants implemented the opportunities in a very large scale using typography, calligraphy, illustration, photography, painting techniques and a mix of many techniques. 162 works were received from the EU, Russia, China, Iran, etc. The jury chose 82 works for the exhibition supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, the Haapsalu Town Government and the Estonian Graphic Designers Association.
––The iF DESIGN TALENT AWARD is one of the largest and most prestigious competitions for students and young graduates in the field of design. It takes place twice a year with four rotating topics for each.
The topics of this edition were:
1. Smart Homes, Connected Cities – Visions for Cities and Citizens
2. Public Value, Life & Humanity – Living Together
3. Micro Apartments – Maximizing Small Space
4. Future Healthcare – Using Technology to Keep Us Healthier
More than 5,000 entries from 45 countries were submitted to this round of the competition. 68 were awarded – 20 particularly creative concepts (“BEST OF THE YEAR”) also received a share of the 20,000 euros in prize money. The 31 winners of topic 1 and 2 are shown at the exhibition.
––Kids Drawing Exhibition
The 4th grade English-language group from Augustine Kitzberg's school in Karksi-Nuia, got a task to think about the city where in future they would like to live most. And whether they think this city would be the best choice for other as well. Everyone got own vision from their thoughts, which eventually became a drawing on paper and which, hopefully, inspires to create such cities!
"Kalamaja is in the Air" exhibition
In sping 2018 a community book titled “Õhus on Kalamaja” (“Kalamaja is in the Air”) was written and published by a group of Kalamaja fans. Kalamaja is one of the most popular and fastest growing districts in Tallinn today. The book gives a multi-layered insight to this hipsterville of Estonia, its true essence and colourful inhabitants. Through different stories, personal experiences and throw-backs in history the reader discovers how Kalamaja has transformed from a wooden slum of factory workers to a centre of creative industries and a mecca for gastronomes without overlooking problematic issues caused by gentrification. The book is accompanied by an exhibition that portrays locals, who all have a unique and different perception of Kalamaja.
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Street for Kids
The aim of the workshop was to make an old industrial city Saint-Étienne old main street a more human centred place to be. In order to do that the current situation was mapped. Based on the findings the street was made more interactive. The main focus was on children to whom some play areas were created and the overall safety of the street was increased.
Estonian designers, who took part in the project: Johanna Tammsalu, Madlen Hirtentreu, Eva-Karlotta Tatar, Mihkel Mäll and Mihkel-Emil Mikk.
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