MOBILE IDENTITIES
TALLINN MODULE
The Informational City
The inhabitant culture of
this new millenium starts to develop in a join of multidimensional fields that
have as much dense connections as weak imbrincations. In a trans-spatial
hyper-device that overprint and reorganize with the local and personal,
producing new outburst of senses and movements, that does much agglutine and
homogenize as mine and scatter the social ground.
In the modernity a new
fenomenous exists::The imbrincation between
nature, God, humans beings and things, fragmenting the concrete and sintetic
unity of the world in a
multiplicity of semiautonomies with infinity of combinations. And with this
sort of combinations the beginning of a texture of connections of growing
complexity that priorize an abstract fluid of goods and information, in
opposition of a comunicative cadence and a value of uses centered in the vital
experience of the human beings. The places of the contemporary inhabit runs on
new supports that modify the ways of being and translating as much the public
and private sphere as the local and global dimensions of the space.On one side the material and trascendental
conformation of the pre industrial space that enhances the senses and the
social uses of the city-buildings, monuments, plazas, streets, on the other
side the modern devices of confort
and production with systems of infraestructure and ways of circulation
that moves a diversity of objets_ highways, runways, gas networks, electricity
wires_ and in a third dimension a more and more dense and intangible
informational system of planetary reaching: phone, tv, internet, satellital,
electronic wires. The contemporary city results then of the woofing of the
three juxtaposed nettings: one symbolic net work, emerging of the arranging and
value of the monuments, a productive network organized by a multiplicity of
circulations systems, and finally an informatic network with channels and
invisible wavings, that cut through the space. The city as a shape, the city as
a function and the comunicational city interact and filter through each
other.
The technological progress of time and space allows its configurations
as abstract particles with instant coordinations. This forms the core of a flat
and tasteless clear mesh texture, almost invisible to the senses, penetratring
and covering them completely. A mesh texture that functions as a super
conductor of almost any kind of material, allowing the association of the most
diverse elements, from physical to symbolic objects. We are in presence of an inhabit
with intensive and extensive unpublished dimensions, with exact and massive
instantly connections, with real and virtual interactive shapes. An inhabit
whose multiple and unstable elements and folds result in a schizoid mesh
texture. It´s a multiple mesh texture composed by juxtaposed meshes and free
components that empowers movements with a strong autonomy of its parts, a mesh
texture that enhances and sharps breaks of significant chains, dissociations
and heterogeneous connections between spaces, time, shapes, uses and
significances. We are in presence of an heterogeneous and anisotrop state, and
so, of a mesh that reacts in different ways deppending the direction that is
being solicited.MOBILE IDENTITIES OF TALLINN
Tallinn is an Unique city,
but with many identities and districts with their own qualities and distintive
characteristics. Along the time it was
developing from a small
medieval centre to one of the most important cities of the North-centre Europe.
Many of its districts were
created as the core of new housing developments, each one with their own
characteristics. Even today this extended neightbourhoods keep the “spirit”
of their original intentions, they have transform into an
amalgam of homogeneous housing experiences. More than ever, this districts are growing
in density and building new housing on top of green spaces that did made some
of this districts once famous because of this green spots.
On top of this
circumstances we are asked to create new urban furniture for all this
districts. How to keep the Tallinn and estonian identity and at the same time
create a new experience, a sort of an adventure for the city, something the
citizen of Tallinn have been waiting for so long after some old fashioned and failed urban furniture exercises?
How to do to reinject all this
districts with a new energy that makes them return to their own basic and
original identities? To make each Tallinn district unique and
easily recognisable from
each other, and an union of differences? Is it necessary to define this
identities as a permanence in time? Is it not possible to generate “mobile” identities to this districts?. Where the
identifying becomes “ephemeral” and the “identical” are the human qualities of
their inhabitants. Would be possible to build an arquitecture of “movile ephemeral identities”, as a
sort of “cartoon” of moments, of circumstances that reenhances temporaries
characteristics of this districts? As to valorate those minimal and seasonable
atittudes that define and translate the mood of the people, like the “fair
weekend ” or “white Xmas month” or the “June month” in the Old Town.
Using a non permanent
movile spatial structure, we re-inject with identity each one of this sectors.
An equal single module bears all the informational identities, it adapts itself
to the “identity of the moment”, the “mood” in which each district is; as a
season or a fashion, or a cultural statement, or just the inspirational
datascape of the district.
This way, Tallinn and its
modular movile structure is a “texture mesh” sensitive that reacts to the
emotions and identities of its inhabitants.
A texture mesh that “mutes”
and expands where it is more nessesary and sensitive, where its more individual
characteristics are required, and multiplies where its emotions are more
intense, proving then that this relative plurality drives us to a contemporary
configuration with long term consecuences: the more diversity, the more
cohesion.
Our Tallinn module is
then an amalgam of all this
characteristics: on one side the material world, composed with the structure of
red triangles that support and makes shape, and on the other side the
informational network, with an infinity of skin textures that combines and
develop trough each others. This combination of structure and infinit skins
creates our “movile identities kit”
While the shape, in
appareance, looks the same, the skins changes completely the significance, the
colour and the emotions of the urban furniture: this skins can be changes
through time and space, creating this way an overlapping of all the existing
informational lanscapes in the city: one month the wooden skin is in Pirita,
next month is in Kalamaja.
The structure is composed
of light triangles of steel red
frames. This three different triangles can combine with each others in infinit
ways: with one module triangle we create the park bench, and adding the other
two moduled triangles we have the bus stop. This is an evolving system: with
the park bench and the bus station traingles and some others more we create the
kiosk. This moduled traingles connect trought each other with an articulated
piece that can be adjusted and positionated in every possible angle, adjusting
the angles as is needed.
One big pattern contents
all the possible urban furniture availables. Park bench, Advertising stand,
Telephone cabine, Bus stop and finally the Kiosk.
The skins are composed of
different textures and materials. It is possible to add skins just triangle by
traingle, like policarbonate pieces of different colours, densities and
textures, as it is also possible to have one big piece sheet of total pattern
that adjust itself to the total shaped structure, like in the kiosks or in the
bus stop shelves. This
patterns are created in
special fabric textures or in policarbonated textures with the selected prints
plotted in them.
Our aim is to develop
instant identities to each urban furniture having one single structure but many
possibilities of emotional skins. This creates an open landscape of
posibilities for each district to develop their own identity, and with this the
opportunity of Tallinn of become a diversity of well known original districts
and an exiting and creative urban life.
3 Small Questions to the WinnersConcerning the article I am writing for Estonian Art - if it is of any helpI have asked other participants to answer these questions:1. What aspect of your submitted entry do you consider most important andinteresting for yourself?2. As far as I know, all the prize winners will be asked by Tallinn citymunicipals to develop their projects further (they will organise a 2nd phaseof the competition) - is there a special field of interest you would like toinvestigate through that process?3. Is your work a collaboration between different artists -architects/graphic designers etc? If so, who plays the most important role? 1. Besides the material and formal posibilities of our project, which was just one aspect of the final result, we consider there is an internal and external process for each competition. For ourselves this competition helps us to develop our main investigation along the last year, which was the study of the modern city as a lanscape of information and informational networks, the city as a complex amalgam of simbolic, productive and informational nettings. How to decipher and translate all this data, and reorganize or coligate the urban landscape?. Thats our main intention and our entry was a way to aproach the design of a minimal object with the same instruments you aproach urban landscape designing. This way Tallinn Module was contextual to our main intentions, and at the same time reflected the local posibilities of a city like Tallinn.
2. As we said before, we believe that the
formal and material aspect of our entry was one way to aproach the design of an
object as you work with the city and urban landscape. We were pleasently
surprised to see we created a very plastic structure, which was not our
intention in the first time. So as for this further aproach we want to
intensify this very same experience,to see all the posibilities of this
aproach, how much the urban can be related to its minimal aspects, to see how
far we can go, but keeping in mind the plastic feasability is being asked in
this second phase.
3. we are a young group of architects,
but our backgrounds reflects a wide range of interests, so that the result of
our works can show this intensity of variated opinions, from a former plastic
artist to more theory orientated opinions we create and filter trough each
other more as a colective than a classic bureau of architecture.