Probing ‘Resources for a Future’

The inaugural Tallinn Architecture Biennale, “Landscape Urbanism,” was held at the Estonian Museum of Architecture in 2011, and every two years since the festival has explored a diversity of themes, ranging from self-driving cars and Russian-era Socialist architecture to beauty and food. As such, TAB reflects the shared concerns of architects and urban planners around the world, and TAB24 is no different: “Resources for a Future” explores “the resourceful diversity of architectural materials, building concepts, and social planning,” per the TAB website. “Although focused on the local base, it will have a worldwide perspective and call to action.”

Held once again at the Estonian Museum of Architecture, TAB24 was curated Anhelina L. Starkova with Daniel A. Walser and Jaan Kuusemets. “Architecture needs to play a key role in future change,” the curators wrote in their statement, "hereby resources are one of the main factors in the future development of our planet. TAB 24 explores architecture and urban planning in the perspective of resources. The exhibition will focus on different parameters of resources as building materials, typologies, orientation, and architecture to the level of urban planning and society."

Wanting to a little bit know more about the theme and the contributions to the exhibition, World-Architects emailed Starkova some questions. Her replies follow, interspersed with photographs of the exhibition that is on display in Tallinn until December 1, 2024.

The idea of architectural resources was a dominant motive. Initially, three explorative focal lengths were built over this question: resource as materials, resource as conceptual building knowledge, and as social powers. Eventually, building the complex system over architecture led me to a more simplified conclusion — I even made an experiment by forcing each exhibition participant to think about a resource that moves their practice in a very practical way. Autonomously, yet completely coherently, the answer was intellect. Architects extract materials from the earth for a building using only one single resource: professional intelligence.

By forming a pool of diverse architects, we ranked them by competence and characteristic approach and selected the most radical from each section. Having an international curatorial team (Switzerland + Estonia + Ukraine) forced us to be more objective during the participant's selection; we were very open in search of pure architectural talents.

Emmanuelle Déchelette (Déchelette Architecture, Paris) built the entire design industry during the Biennale! She organized a workshop and studied local technological capacities, materials, and people for months while realizing her rammed-earth installation. It was emblematic of TAB24.

Also Søren Pihlmann (pihlmann architects, Copenhagen, with photographer Hampus Berndtson), with the idea of architectural material reinvention. The strength of his proposal was in the extreme reuse approach, which was organized exclusively with the existing. This is overwhelmingly beautiful thinking in the context of a curatorial course anticipating the future.

Curating largely based on my personal experience — I conceived the exhibition directly from a war zone — It was important to avoid extra materials and tools in the exhibition design. Purifying and leaving only the essentials led me to the idea that the main tool for the physical construction was communication between each exhibition project. Bringing together different thinkers and countries under one roof in a relatively small space was a challenge. In the end, it worked — the exhibition has a sense of holistic construction, proof that architects can work together.

The complexity of the local, the infinite potentiality of simplicity, and the technically accessible architecture that we revealed during the exhibition are inspiring and influential, I think. And most importantly, architecture is ruled by intelligence, behind all the difficulties of our profession is a poetic aspiration — it gives us wings.

A few reasons I think the exhibition has been well-received:

• Understandability — The topic of local resources is accessible and important for the local audience; testing the capabilities of what is in hand sometimes brings the most unexpected results.
• Essentiality — The whole idea of the project was to uncover the core resources of architecture, on the level of materials, building concepts, and human intelligence. In other words, bringing a raw and honest presentation to the urban society was well-received because we raised things hidden but common to all of us.
• Curatorial background — I was born in Ukraine and literally curated this project from a war zone. It had some purifying influence on all of the installations. The war was a source that brought the idea of both survival and salubrious potentials of the buildings to the curatorial table. These aspects were explicitly demonstrated in the curatorial exhibition over materials installations as well as abstract architectural poetries.