Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2022: The Latest Architecture and News

Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2022: "Edible; Or, The Architecture of Metabolism" announced record numbers in its 6th edition after 3 months of exhibitions in Estonia's capital. From installations and a symposium to satellite events, the biennale received in its opening week a record of circa 3000 visitors between architects, planners, designers, and students from more than 20 countries. Due to the successful outcome, the Installation "Fungible Non-Fungible" will be installed until 2024 marking the beginning of the 7th TAB.

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In our current context of ecological crisis, global warming, biodiversity loss, human population growth, and urban sprawl, we need to rethink the way we build and live in our city. We have observed the consequence of uncontrolled urban planning and construction driven only by a capitalist and productivist vision of the city, packing as many humans as possible in the cheapest constructions available, without consideration for the impact on our planet, our fellow animals &  plants inhabitants, and our own wellbeing. The concrete jungles we have been building for the past century have proven to be disrupting our climate (Global Warming, Local heat island effect), our ecosystems (loss of biodiversity, and recess of animals & plants population), and our economy (the food and product industry have been displaced far away, replaced by the only service industry, and the generation of the huge amount of waste in the city).

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Staged stories on community and identity, ephemeral architecture showed that in 2022 it doesn't have to be permanent to be powerful. A direct and popped-up public installation can shift from preparation to action, reclaiming and defining what makes a community unique. Highlighting installations to acknowledge linguistic diversity in NYC, a giant table to celebrate culinary in Barcelona, and a large-scale net in Dubai to represent the local culture, among others, these initiatives seek to understand ways in which local and regional expressions can help cities to be more equal and diverse.

Globalization has connected the world boundaryless. While it has also made information more accessible, it has led to homogeneity and identity crisis at melding unique societies and cultural expressions. Cultural differences are undeniable as globalization grows. Hence, as architecture produces common living standards, it can also highlight singularities. Festivals, installations, and pavilions, 2022 was the year to express local memories to be recognized and celebrated, setting Community and identity as central topics in ephemeral architecture throughout the year.

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In an age of unprecedented globalization, our food supply chains — the institutions and mechanisms involved in food production and distribution — have become longer. So much so that they are hardly perceived as chains or systems. They have been integrated into our lives, and into our cities, and transformed our relationships with food. And yet, those very long food supply chains are implicated in some of our most pressing global problems, from food security and waste to biodiversity and climate change. These food supply chains have come to their current state, their current length, over decades, or centuries perhaps, through all sorts of political, social, cultural, and economic processes, and carry with them a range of burdens: vague producer-consumer relationships, and a host of negative environmental externalities, among many others.

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In 2013 ArchDaily published the article “Can We Please Stop Drawing Trees on Top of Skyscrapers,” - its author was frustrated by rampant greenwashing. If you wanted it to look sustainable, you’d just have to put a tree on it. Plants have always been an effective marketing tactic to appeal to the environmentally conscious, but as soon as they are photoshopped in, they are often discarded at the first whiff of value engineering. Given the voluminous flurry of vigorous commentary and debate following that publication (2013, 2016, 2016) it is clear there is something that persists, perhaps a widely felt instinct that in truth, our urban “landscapes” are unsustainable, and often unlivable. Our cities not only take advantage of the ecosystem services of far-off forests and groundwater to support our carbon production, air pollution, and water wastage, exhausting arable land to feed our increasingly urban populations but simultaneously create urban areas devoid of life that increase our carbon footprints and negatively impact human health and well-being.

London and Tokyo-based arts and research practice MSCTY is the leading global agency for music and architecture established in 2010. "We believe that the things we hear are as important as those we see".

MSCTY gives a stage to urban environments through sound artists who interpret spatial qualities and architecture into their language of music. Strong connections with the Estonian music scene and a love for the fast-developing, yet raw and historically rich cityscape have led to a special incarnation of the project - MSCTY x Tallinn.

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After two years of disrupted cycles of architecture events, due to the pandemic, 2022 has been witnessing a resurgence: biennials, triennials, design weeks, and festivals are back in the picture, with bigger interrogations and larger thematic approaches, aligned with the challenges of the world.

Relevant today more than ever, these happenings scattered around the globe are tackling climate-related issues, urban problems, as well as concerns engendered by covid-19 such as resilience, models of living, future of design, and the unknown.

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Dedicated to the theme "Edible; Or, The Architecture of Metabolism," the 6th version of the Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB) 2022 opens on 7 September 2022, in partnership with ArchDaily and the curatorship of Lydia Kallipoliti and Areti Markopoulou, in collaboration with local advisor Ivan Sergejev. Divided into five thematic groups: Living machines, Lifecycle, Food and Geopolitics, Food Systems, and the Future Food Deal, the TAB invites audiences to reflect on food and architecture and to reimagine planetary food systems along with architecture's capacity to perform metabolic processes.

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From supermarkets to superfoods, contemporary cultures of food production to consumption are based on the illusion that the crowning designation of “super” status represents a reliable global economic boom of food commodities in-play rather than a signal of an expanding cyclical agricultural crisis. Across diverse spaces that facilitate the extraction, transformation and distribution of food in this cycle—farms, warehouses, factories, grocery stores, restaurants—it is the domestic dining table, typically confined to food consumption, that is framed as a site for reinvention in the installation “Everything’s on theTable”.

Fungi are almost everywhere - in the air you breathe, the soil you walk on, we eat them and yes, they do also live inside of us.

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The use of earth-based materials appears in two practices throughout history: in the construction of buildings and – far less commonly known or conclusively understood – in certain dietary consumption patterns. To put it simply – soil, the most important nutrient collector on earth, can be used for both building and for eating. 

When we consider something edible, we understand its capacity to be eaten, consumed, or ingested independently of its taste. If our contemporary relationship to the built environment reflected this process, what would cities and constructed environments become?

Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB 2022) announced the programme for its 6th edition that brings forward circularity in architecture. Under the theme "Edible; Or, The Architecture of Metabolism", this year's edition explores "architectural strategies for local production and self-sufficiency" and highlights ways of reusing waste resulting from urban environments. Curated by Lydia Kallipoliti and Areti Markopoulou, in collaboration with local advisor Ivan Sergejev and assistant curator Sonia Sobrino Ralston, TAB 2022 reflects on the possibilities that natural metabolical processes can bring to cities and buildings when transferred to the domain of architecture.

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Due to unexpected circumstances, The Tallinn Architecture Biennale announced a new winning proposal for its Installation Programme Competition: Fungible Non-Fungible Pavilion by iheartblob, a new "decentralized and systematic" approach towards architectural design which allows the community to be both designers and investors, contributing to a structure that evolves over time. TAB 2022 will take place during September – October 2022, with the opening week on the 7th–11th of September.

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Australian duo Simulaa and Natalie Alima have won the competition for the 2022 Tallinn Architecture Biennale in Estonia with an installation made of mushrooms. Titled Burlasite, the structure's base will employ 3D printing technology that will be taken over by mycelia over time. The proposal highlights repurposing and reusing local materials, and how humans can create sustainable designs with invention and environmental adaptation. The Tallinn Architecture Biennale will open to the public on September 7th, 2022, and the installation will be on display until 2024 in front of the Museum of Estonian Architecture.

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