architecture buzz!!

Photograph ©Ott Kadarik

OBJECT:              Apartment building
LOCATION:        Tallinn Vana-Viru 13/ Aia 4
PROJECT:           Winning entry of a closed competition
STATUS:              Project
ARCHITECT:     KOSMOS

The 5-story apartment building is situated on the edge of the medieval old town of Tallinn. It is not dominant from the street level, nor does it seem too high in the surrounding context. The dynamic mass of the building is situated in the northern and western side of the plot. In connection with some old historically valuable buildings,it creates an environment of small interconnected units, characteristic to the architectural whole of the old town.

Photograph ©Ott Kadarik

Every apartment has a large terrace, bringing private house typology into the very center of the city. The ground level opens to the street as an active shopping space. The construction of the building is a combination of reinforced concrete and steel frames. The non-supporting walls are finished with natural stone tiles, making the building visually smaller, while alluding to the surrounding stone houses of the old town.

Photograph ©Ott Kadarik

The timber-clad terraces and the horizontal surfaces of the overhangs link the apartment block to the neighboring wooden house, while decomposing the building’s volume into a variety of spaces. It is an inner-city landscape house of different qualities.

Following Photographs ©Paco Ulman

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Drawings Courtesy Kosmos

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