TAB 2024

Architecture has to be instrumental in shaping future change. e. Hereby the primary drivers of the future development of our planet are our resources.

TAB 2024 explores architecture and urban planning from the perspective of resources.

The exhibition will focus on different parameters of resources such as building materials, typologies, orientation, and architecture, to the level of urban planning and society. The exhibition, although with a local base and call to action, will have a world-wide perspective. 

ARCHITECTURE REMAINS 

After sustainable – escalating global tensions impose new tasks on architecture, where architects are left with a reduced amount of resources and space for social mobility, diversification and changeability – the usual tools for conceiving architecture. What approach would they then take in such a future setting? Mass architecture will not disappear and it needs to accept the resources available to it. Access to architectural quality should not be limited to a fortunate minority. To sustain social cohesion, we have to create opportunities for everyone to utilise spacial environmental resources. Architecture serves a purpose beyond just luxury aesthetics. It’s a tool to solve our problems as a society at a larger scale. A massive transforming process of the architecture and building profession is needed. So, what trace we have of architecture that moves forward in the 90% of unseen, unpleasant, and hidden buildings to make them valuable and relevant for change? 

How to stabilise and enforce our architectural strategies, prolong the lifespan of buildings, and make architecture more consolidated and remaining? 

BUT ARCHITECTURE REMAINS

How to conceive and construct an architectural program that remains stabilising enough to support architecture amidst ever-changing environmental conditions in perpetual crisis? Reuse will be a subsequent strategy. 

Utilising local resources will reinforce existing structures and facilitate the transformation of a location towards improvement and progress. A challenge will be how we work within unsustainable and prevailing local conditions and convert them into resources for both society and its future development? Defense and durability will be a basis for architecture for high-quality construction. Buildings need to be in use for a much longer time, despite our economically driven society, where every building is transformed or even torn down after 40 years. 

Does undermining a stable, traditional (circular and conscious) experience in architecture integrate its experience in contemporality? If this is possible for big city planning strategies, can we learn from the Estonian experience? 

Curatorial

Under the general theme “Resources for a Future” we coalesce three sides that constitute as a big architectural resource: 

RESOURCE 1 – SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE (Urban vision) 

The section questions the built results of social interaction. What keeps our societies together? How can architecture help develop a sense of community? How local solutions function as a reaction to global equalization? But we’ll also focus on more essential questions, such as surviving spaces, accessible architecture , possibilities of non-wastefulness and urbanism, understood as space for possibilities for social interaction.  

RESOURCE 2 – BUILDING CONCEPT (Tool) 

The section focuses on design ideas and solutions to solve contemporary questions and needs. The section shows local reactions on the environment and its needs. It’s about the inner modelling of architecture, the use and development of unseen typologies. Thematic matters are used building materials, low geometries, invisible tools, contemporary technical solutions. A special focus will be on the reuse of existing building materials or building concepts to develop an architecture solutions. 

RESOURCE 3 – MATERIAL FORMATION (Form) 

The section examines how architecture responds to social, urban, and political crises through tangible construction. Exhibition themes include responses to conflict zones, experimental resilience, and the use of non-extractive resources.  

Curators

Anhelina L. Starkova

Daniel A. Walser

Jaan Kuusemets

History of Tallinn Architecture Biennale

TAB is organised by Estonian Centre for Architecture.

TAB 2022 “Edible; Or, The Architecture of Metabolism” was curated by Lydia Kallipoliti, Areti Markopoulou in collaboration with Chief Local Advisor Ivan Sergejev. In the biennale “food” was approached both literally and metaphorically.

TAB 2019 “Beauty Matters” was curated by Dr Yael Reisner. The biennale focused on the how beauty matters again, reflecting a cultural shift after nearly eighty years of dormancy when beauty was a tabooed and denigrated subject. 

TAB 2017 “bioTallinn”, curated by Claudia Pasquero (ecoLogicStudio), challenged the typical assumptions of what constitutes the boundaries between the natural and artificial realms.

TAB 2015 “Self-Driven City”, curated by Marten Kaevats, explored future cities with self-driven cars.

TAB 2013 “Recycling Socialism”, curated by Aet Ader, Kadri Klementi, Karin Tõugu, and Kaidi Õis, redefined the Soviet-era urban environment in Tallinn.

TAB 2011 “Landscape Urbanism”, curated by Villem Tomiste