LOADING PROJECT

Tartu Cultural Center

Archaic masses of monumentality rest as semi-sunken precursors in the growing landscape of Tartu, Estonia, enacting visual performance to the memento of timely endurance as a container for the local culture. As one is swept into the fluid arrangements of the landscape they will find themself blending between the intended greenery and the porosity of the delaminating moments found between the sisterly continuity curves which cascade between interior and exterior. While all buildings - a library, museum, workshop, cinema, event center, and eatery - are founded in the same foundation of heavy monumental masses with similar dynamics, each building boasts a unique flavor to identify it amongst the assembling mass of clusters; the library focussed on wave-like cascades of motions; the museum conceptualized around a central, orbital point; etc. Many buildings are encapsulated by a volumetric glass enclosures which take the same flavor approach to the surface of the enclosures; their visual unifies air spaces at higher datums to the heavy masses below and allows unobstructed views to the formal geometries employed while providing sufficient comfort levels.

SCI-Arc Design Studio 3B / April 2024 / with Professor Soomeen Hahm and partner Molly Morgan