VARES is an international interdisciplinary residency for spatial practice, whose main task is to seek, find and create alternative spatial practices that are not based on market logic, but rather on the desire to create spaces and places that enrich everyday life, empower the local community and town of Valga.
We are interested in finding ways to practice slow architecture, critically rethinking the discipline of architecture, learning and resurrecting vernacular and traditional crafts, gathering old and used materials and creating a place for lifelong learning for architects and spatial artists.
VARES is a part of the European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024 main programme.
VARES Architecture Residency Uus 35, 68203 Valga, Estonia
Present
EVENT: SPRING EXHIBITION
On the 27th and 28th of April we will open the VARES spring exhibition, where Ola Lewczyk, Ben Weir and the artist duo DE JENS showcase their work done during the residency. The works are material, sensuous and community focused interventions that are shown in VARES house and around the town of Valga.
Saturday, April 27 13:00 Brick-making workshop in VARES’ garden 15:00 Furniture walk from VARES -> town square (Riia 5) 16:00 Installation opening on the town square (Riia 5)
Sunday, April 28: 14:00-19:00 open doors at Riia 5 and courtyard
Ola’s brick-making workshop is open to anyone interested and includes working with clay with both hands and feet, please dress accordingly.
*
Ola Lewczyk’s installation CLAY concentrates on the humble clay brick, mixed with domestic and day-to-day waste. She rethinks what local material production might look like, docusing on the kiln used for ceramic work, building it up from raw clay bricks to produce unique pieces inspired by the Valga context.
Ben Weir’s installation HEAT researches the ways heated furniture could look like. He will construct small scale pieces inside the VARES building with its fluctuating temperatures that are unplugged from the traditional fixed heating structures of houses (radiators, furnaces and boilers). During the spring exhibition, Ben will organize a furniture procession, taking the warm pieces into the town of Valga.
DE JENZ duos COMMUNITY intervention is a collaborative installation that researches the unique historic and contemporary context of Valga and Valka. They will search for unused spaces with hidden potential where together with the local youth they will construct an informal gathering space that will be left for the local community to use and care for.
Ben Weir is an architect from Northern Ireland, Belfast. He works within the discipline of architecture, denouncing the notion of the architect as a neutral service provider. He draws, writes, researches and builds to uncover hidden spatial and material potentials.
His projects are generated through the survey of existing conditions, a process that invents as much as records. Favouring dynamism, the unfinished, the open-to-change, he reject demolition and tabula rasa. He dissects, re-presents and interrogates existing urban artefacts, seeking to express their current condition, situation, or relationship to us. Inserting new objects into this milieu, Ben is always seeking a positive contribution to a diverse, equitable and complex environment.
In the course of the residency, Ben will design and fabricate a set of heated furniture pieces. Movable objects that can be used as chairs, stools, benches or tables, whilst also incorporating heating elements such as electric radiators. Drawing inspiration from the contemporary condition of artists as transient beings, endlessly in flux, travelling for residencies and projects, on limited visas, and being forced to move out of (already insufficient) studio spaces. Heating elements are usually seen as ‘fixtures and fittings,’ permanent elements, plumbed-in to a boiler, unmovable. He wishes to free the heating element so that it can become unfixed, nomadic, a mirror to the artist themselves. A kind of daily camping, where objects are significant for survival.
Come and see what Ben is doing in Valga on April 27 and 28.
The artist duo DE JENZ (Vibeke Jensen & Santiago De Waele) is based on a remote island with 10 inhabitants, situated among the western-most archipelago on the Norwegian coast. There they explore critical interfaces with the coastal environment and engage in collaborations between the local community and international artist that reflect the potential of not making a distinction between culture and nature – to create a more symbiotic, rather than exploitative, way of understanding the world around us.
After decades of traveling the world and living in big cities like Rome, New York, London and Berlin (Vibeke), and the medieval city of Brugge (Santiago), we have joined up and live and work in a 99 year old schoolhouse next to a stone jetty. Their moving from metropolises to a small island and the shift in perspective accompanying the way of life in harsh coastal landscapes has created a new way of awareness, attention and togetherness with nature – AKWANAUTØYNA – in which landscape, life and art merge into one.
During the residency they want to discover what is specific and unique about the twin cities of Valga and Valka from different perspectives, historic as well as contemporary. They are looking to find the special things in the place’s history, situation and context, current challenges and textures that can be brought out and manifested through a spatial intervention. De Jenz wishes to connect with local schools, art organisations, craft workshops, older people and others with local knowledge. They hope to engage with local youth and people with different perspectives to discover unused potentials, transform potent spaces into informal gathering places for unprogrammed thoughts and actions, and engage in performative actions that generate new memories and connections.
Come and see what De Jenz is doing in Valga on April 27 and 28.
Ola Lewczyk is a maker who’s practice focuses on craft, material research and locality. She works primarily with clay, beeswax and collected natural materials. She works and understands things through touch, being drawn to slow, repetitive processes. Influenced by slavic folklore and fluidity of things, she continuously moves between the grounding and the intangible.
Found clay, sand and urban wastes; construction debris, pavement dust, coffee grounds from a local cafe, hair from the hairdresser mixed by feet and thrown by hands into wooden moulds. Ola will experiment with brick-making, using urban materials in different ratios to test brick recipes. Part of the endeavor is building a kiln, from raw bricks to fire them and as a same time treating the kiln as a temporary architectural structure of its own. The project uses making bricks as a way to re-think local manufacturing and connection to our surroundings. It’s a research into ways of retaining craft based practices while thinking about the materials past and future.
Come and see what Ola is doing in Valga on April 27 and 28.
Public voting open until May 6, cast your vote here! On April 15-22, we held a competition to collect ideas for the daylighting the Valga’s Pepper stream. The competition received 14 submissions. Thank you to all the participants! The three awarded works will be determined as a result of public and jury voting. Below is the competition task.
In the wake of modern times, many progressive cities buried the streams and rivers that witnessed their birth. Today, forward looking municipalities are opening the once culverted waterways, bringing them back to life. With this idea competition, we invite (landscape) architects, ecologists, urbanists and artists to imagine the possibilities of unearthed urban streams.
Valga, located on the border of southern Estonia, is a small town full of streams and springs, where the murmur of water can be heard in several places. But like in many other cities, several creeks and streams have been channelled into underground pipes in the last century which is why they have lost a large part of their variety of life. The municipality has now taken the direction of opening city streams and restoring them as ecologically abundant habitats.
The competition seeks to collect spatial visions for daylighting the Pepper stream (Pipraoja), which runs through the centre of Valga, with the aim of emphasising its presence in the cityscape, making it an attractive recreation area for people and enhancing the variety of life found there. Participants are expected to propose a landscape concept and trajectory for the stream and/or small-scale architectural interventions which would create meeting points for humans and various other life forms to be found near the streams.
→The competition period is April 15-22. → Submit 3 images (illustration, plans, schemes, etc) and a text. → Three winners will receive monetary prizes 3×500€.
The competition is part of the ‘Flock of Ideas’ series of idea competitions. The competition is organised by Valga Architecture Residency VARES in cooperation with the Latvian idea competition platform TANDEEMS, Valga municipality and Valga Vesi.
Below is a small gallery from a summery Monday, when, as a part of the competition programme, we went on a stream tracking expedition with local fifth graders.
Past
EXHIBITION: SOFT CREATURES
Exhibition by Laura Pint
Soft creatures’ series started from a desire for a more exciting form of softness in everyday space. The idea was born from the fabric surplus of the furniture industry, which was looking for a new use.
The space around us is often preplanned down to the size of the wardrobe and the location of the sofa. The mass-produced furniture itself tends to be just as traditional. Soft creatures are an attempt to experiment with the nature of furniture, objects are created that adapt to each body and inspire unusual ways of use. The project was lead with environmentally sustainable principles in mind, using furniture fabric offcuts, by giving it a new life. The soft creatures evoke a variety of bodily sensations, be it embrace of the soft object, warmth or heaviness creatin a feeling of safety.
VARES opened its doors on Saturday, March 30, and invites everyone to participate in the diverse programme.
Schedule: 14:00 Opening of Laura Pint’s exhibition 15:00 Presentation of Anni Saviaro’s research on shrinking cities 16:00 Opinion journey on climate-sustainable construction and urban planning
Laura Pint arrived at VARES in the beginning of March. Besides her main work in an architectural office, she likes to work with her hands and experiment with different media. Be it building furniture, sewing or leather work. Laura will present her soft inventions at 14:00.
Laura’s goal during the residency is to delve into unconventional furniture design and explore alternative spatial configurations, blurring boundaries and redefining the relationship between the space and its users. She is inspired by the idea of finding ways to make everyday standardized space more interesting, exciting and flexible. During the work, she plans to experiment with different forms, materials and construction methods. The goal is to use material waste and offcuts from furniture production and through it advocating for more sustainable ways of production. The final result of the residency is a piece of furniture based on the month-long study. Laura aims for the piece to not only reflect the results of her research, but also to be a practical example of how architecture and furniture design can jointly contribute to an environmentally friendly and creatively thinking future.
Anni Saviaro is a Finnish architect who came to VARES to work on her PhD dissertation. Her research focuses on urban planning in a shrinking context, its justification, and its connection to growth. Anni will hold a presentation about the planning of shrinking cities at 15:00.
Anni’s interest and focus in her research lies in urban planning in a shrinking context, its justification, and its connection to growth. The purpose of her research is to increase understanding of urban planning in a shrinking context, through which it is possible to make planning processes more democratic and to create tools for finding appropriate planning goals and approaches in a shrinking context. The research emphasizes the need for urban planning that considers different growth contexts, where different starting points of cities and municipalities are identified. Valga is an interesting case study for her research.
At 16–18, we will be conducting an open-for-all “opinion journey” on the topic of environmentally friendly building and urban planning. Join us in the envisioning and discussing – your ideas will influence the state’s development strategies, the coming climate law, and the state budget.
We will collectively brainstorm solutions for how the state, locan governments and communities might best help in the renovating Estonian buildings and boosting the circular and ecological use of building materials. Think about what kind of house you live in right now; how has it been built and out of what; what kind of house would you ideally like to live in? If you needed to renovate, whose help and for what would you need? Do you know of any good examples from other countries on how people were encouraged to renovate their houses?
The “opinion journey” is an inclusion format and open call initiated by the Ministry of Climate and the State of Estonia Government Office. It invites people to speak up on topics and offer proposals in areas that the coming climate law might influence. The results of the discussion will be taken into account in creating and reinforcing the climate law and state development strategies. The discussion will be moderated by Maria Muuk; the currently planned language is Estonian, but we will be flexible to host the discussion in English if necessary.
The three winning works of the Linnahall idea competition have been selected!
From February 19 to 26, a 7-day international idea competition on possible futures of Linnahall took place. Everyone interested in urban space and architectural heritage was welcomed to speculate on the future of Tallinn’s mythical amphibian – Linnahall. The competition received 47 submissions. Thank you to all the participants!
The names of the prize winning entries are: Uusvana, Linnakivi “One and one, it is one – it is not two.”, Linnahall as Center for Culture, Sports and Music
The three winners will receive 3×1000€ prizes. The winners were determined as a result of voting by the jury, the public and the pupils who participated in the side programme.
The jury included five architecture and urban planning experts: Owen Hatherley, Karli Luik, Andres Ojari, Siiri Vallner and Kevin Villem. All the submissions and the comments given by the jury can be viewed on the online platform Tandeems.
The competition is part of the Estonian-Latvian collaboration project, the ‘Flock of Ideas’ series of idea competitions. The aim of the competitions is to collect as many ideas as possible, which could expand the imagination of the citizens and decision-makers about the urban space. We will publish our own article about the competition soon. And in just a few weeks, the competition on the topic of urban streams will be held, we will share more very soon.
Anni Saviaro is a Finnish architect whose PhD research studies shrinking context within the field of urban planning focusing on growth dependency and justification of urban planning.
She is into peer learning and working collaboratively and that has led her to create and be part of different communities such as jeesjeesgood collective, and various associations in the field of art and architecture. She is a dreamer who loves R&B music and is interested in degrowth.
Anni Saviaro’s interest and focus in her research lies in urban planning in a shrinking context, its justification, and its connection to growth. The purpose of her research is to increase understanding of urban planning in a shrinking context, through which it is possible to make planning processes more democratic and to create tools for finding appropriate planning goals and approaches in a shrinking context. The research emphasizes the need for urban planning that considers different growth contexts, where different starting points of cities and municipalities are identified.
From the residency period in VARES, she hopes to find inspiration, peer support, meet new people and possible collaborators as well as an inspiring and calming environment to work in. In her research, the focus will be on writing a paper that deals with an analysis framework she is developing concerning the relationship between growth and justification in urban planning.
Laura Pint is an architect who currently works in the Peeter Pere Architects office. She has graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts architecture and city planning department. Besides her main work, she likes to work with her hands and experiment with different media. Be it building furniture, sewing or leather work.
Laura’s goal during the residency is to delve into unconventional furniture design and explore alternative spatial configurations, blurring boundaries and redefining the relationship between the space and its users.
She is inspired by the idea of finding ways to make everyday standardized space more interesting, exciting and flexible. During the work, she plans to experiment with different forms, materials and construction methods. The goal is to use material waste and offcuts from furniture production and through it advocating for more sustainable ways of production.
The final result of the residency is a piece of furniture based on the month-long study. Laura aims for the piece to not only reflect the results of her research, but also to be a practical example of how architecture and furniture design can jointly contribute to an environmentally friendly and creatively thinking future.
On February 24, the opening party of VARES took place, the highlight of which was the exhibition of the very first resident, Alastair Howard. Read the text of the exhibition, the main character of which is a character peeled from the wall:
A building’s material construction is sometimes known as its fabric. Playing with this idea, Alastair’s installation peels back and dramatises these layers of building fabric, using techniques gained through his work in the theatre. At the centre of this scene is the character of the Rothound, inspired by real dogs trained to smell for rotting timber in historic buildings. Here, the Rothound is imagined as a mythical detective, discovering hidden histories in each construction layer. He is made from steam-bent plywood, like that used to clad the interior walls of the classrooms here in the 1960s. The hound is discovered behind a linen scrim, animated on a pulley system like those found on a theatre stage. An imprint of the original wood panelling has been made on the scrim, along with a fossil/a relic/the markings of a bird. A thermal image of the wall is projected at 1:1 scale, with the stove a glowing red. Throughout the room, plaster has fallen away to reveal the wattle and daub technique, as well as the structural logs behind.
On February 24, we officially opened the VARES residency. Alastair introduced his exhibition, we made Baltic sprat sandwiches, watched the President’s speech, hosted guests. When decorating the cake, we were inspired by the mud and snow melting under the first rays of the sun.
AUTUMN-WINTER RESIDENTS 2024
Approximately 40 residents with 17 residency projects will participate in the VARES residency programme in 2024. Here we will introduce the autumn-winter residents:
STUUDIO KOLLEKTIIVis a young architectural collective of 7 members: Lill Volmer, Eneli Kleemann, Mia Martina Peil, Saskia Epp Lõhmus, Anna Riin Velner, Katariina Mustasaar, Marie Anette Veesaar. They are dedicated to the repurposing of materials, prioritizing environmental responsibility and raising awareness of the amount of waste produced during construction. In the residency they wish to conduct a research about both natural and reusable materials in Valga. By mapping and collecting recycled materials, they will experiment with different composites and work on developing their own spatial language. The result of the tests would be setting up an installation in Valga, from local materials.
Augustas Lapinskas is an architect from Vilnius, Lithuania, having a background in literature, music, and performative arts, while Ditiya Ferdous is an artist and filmmaker from Queens, New York. Their common practice, Space Nursing involves the creation of Nurseries, or public spaces which recognize urban wastelands as ecologically rich environments. During the course of the residency, they would like to experiment with new recipes for bio-active paint, using lichens, mosses and fungi to produce site-specific installations.
Diāna Mikāne is an artistic researcher, currently working between Riga (LV) and Nida (LT). Paula Veidenbauma is an urbanist, sometimes a performer, sometimes a writer who lives and works between Riga (LV), Tallinn (EE) and Vienna (AT).Together, they form the artistic research collective gel, whose research inquiries gravitate around nuances of everyday aesthetics and the examination of postcolonial practices in the context of a modern Post-Soviet space. In this residency, they aim to study local pseudo-scientific and experimental building-related practices such as dowsing and explore energetic undertones of space-making through somatic movement, embodied reconnection, and human and material interaction.
Anna Tamm (b. 1994) is an Estonian multimedia artist based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. They have graduated at the Estonian Academy of Arts and Gerrit Rietveld Academy. At the moment, they are obtaining a master’s degree at the Sandberg Instituut in the department of F for Fact.
In the residency, Anna proceeds from the issue of preserving the Soviet heritage and focuses on local stories connected to the extendable dining table, Project no. 16, which was produced in the Valga furniture factory and is still present in many homes.
CONSTRUCTLAB is a transdisciplinary design-build network that breaks with traditional divisions of labor and brings together multi-talented designer-builders – as well as sociologists, urban planners, graphic designers, curators, educators and web developers – who carry the creative process from the drawing board to the field. Their shared vision of a collaborative way of working combines the creative with the practical, the thinking with the doing. During the residency, an installation will be built on the Estonian-Latvian border collectively with the locals.
Every month of 2024, there will be at least one public event in the town of Valga, in the framework of which VARES residents will present their work and activities to both locals and a wider audience.
VARES is a part of the European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024 main programme. Residencies are supported by the Estonian Ministry of Culture, KULKA, Nordic Culture Point and LoovEuropa ‘Culture Moves Europe’
Space Nursing intervention in Sheffield, Kelham Island. August 2023. Photographer: Lukas Jusas
COMPETITION: POSSIBLE FUTURES OF LINNAHALL
The idea competition “Possible futures of Linnahall” has began!
The short 7-day international vision competition invites everyone interested in urban space to participate and speculate on the future of Tallinn’s mythical amphibian, Linnahall.
The competition task and the base materials can be found on the online platform Tandeems. The competition work consisting of 1-3 pictures and text must be submitted there by February 26.
The three winners will receive 3×1000€ prizes. Each submitted work is given written feedback by five experts in architecture and urban planning: Owen Hatherley, Karli Luik, Andres Ojari, Siiri Vallner and Kevin Villem.
The three best winning works are selected as a result of an online vote, in which the jury, young people participating in the side program and the audience participate.
The competition is motivated by the controversy about the Tallinn City Hall (Linnahall), which has revived in recent months, and its goal is to collect as many different ideas, future scenarios and potential uses as possible, which would help to expand the imagination of both the citizens and the decision-makers regarding the City Hall. Delicate interventions, quick speculations and down-to-earth solutions are welcomed. But also constructive utopias that rethink conventional practices, but whose roots are in the present around us, not in an ideal world with unlimited resources.
Who are we expecting to attend? We welcome both practicing and studying architects, urban planners and heritage conservationists, as well as art scholars, artists, writers and all other creators who care about the fate of Linnahall to participate! The competition also includes a side program aimed at schoolchildren.
For inspiration: 5 mini-lectures As an introduction, we asked five architecture practitioners and theorists to give a speech that would inspire others to take part in the idea competition: Multiple Views on Linnahall They are talking about the spatial potential of Linnahall, architectural parallels, rare constructions, human scale and metaphysical dimension.
Approximately 40 residents with 17 residency projects will participate in the VARES residency programme in 2024. They were selected as a result of two open calls at the end of last year.
The residents of the first half of the year are:
Alastair Howard is an architect from England. His interest in scenography makes him experiment with the mechanisms used in scenic construction, which results in the creation of animated inventions of the VARES house.
Laura Pint is an Estonian architect whose residency work will be based on the word ‘softness’. During her stay in Valga, installations will be made from the leftovers of furniture production both in the VARES building and in the town of Valga.
Anni Saviaro is a Finnish architect who is writing a thesis on shrinking cities and justified urban planning. Valga is an interesting case study for her, and she will present the results of her research to the locals.
DE JENZ is an artist duo Vibeke Jensen & Santiago De Waele living and working on a tiny island off the west coast of Norway. During the residency, they plan to discover the peculiarities of the twin city of Valga-Valka by involving the community and collecting stories, which will eventually manifest as a spatial intervention.
Ben Weir is an architect from Belfast, who is drawing inspiration from the contemporary condition of artists as transient beings. In the residency, he wishes to free heated elements from their usual fixity. For this purpose, he designs and builds a set of heated furniture, as kind of companions for daily camping, where objects are significant for survival.
Ola Lewczyk is an artist from Poland who during her stay in VARES will be creating bricks from locally found organic materials like construction rubbles, dust, sand, hair etc. The project uses making bricks as a way to re-think local manufacturing and connection to our surroundings.
Liis Vares is an Estonian choreographer and an artist. She is curious about spaces that unroll when functionality and aesthetical norms are put aside. She sees the potential in connecting physical and virtual spaces in order to drive attention to and reduce the solitude and isolation that disablement or peripheral dwelling creates.
Jinseok Choi is an interdisciplinary artist who comes from South Korea but lives in Los Angeles at the moment. In Valga he will open an open repair shop aimed to ponder over manual labour, productivity and efficiency in our current society.
Päär Keedus & Karolin Kull are Estonian interior architects who are driven by locality, re-used materials and self building. They are planning a site specific installation in the public space of Valga.
Additionally to the regular residency programme VARES is hosting a group residency with a specific theme: Sketchy Materials Wasteland. The group was assembled via an open call and cosists of seven architects: Emel Tuupainen, Jack O’Hagan, Sandra Mirka, Aistė Gaidilionytė, Kamilė Vasiliauskaitė, Jakob D’Herde. During their stay they will focus, find unique perspectives and take a look at the afterlife of the ever growing issue of cheap, fast and unreliable materials surrounding us. The residency will finish with a group exhibition in the middle of August.
In the first half of June VARES will host a group of regional artists-researchers with their project Baltic Lines. The project is part of a larger artistic research, which focuses on rail connections within the Baltic states and geopolitical dynamics from the perspective of a critical urbanism.
In every month of 2024 at least one public event will be held, where residents of VARES will show their work to the public from Valga and beyond.
VARES is part of the European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024 main programme. Residencies are supported by Estonian Ministry of Culture, KULKA, Nordic Culture Point, Culture Moves Europe and German Embassy in Tallinn.
Image by Jinseok Choi. White Cube, 2012, Abandoned furniture and objects from an old elementary school building
VARES’ FIRST RESIDENT
We welcome our very first resident, Alastair Howard!
Alastair is an architectural designer from Manchester, UK. Having worked at architecture and engineering firms in New York and London, his practice is aimed at breaking out of the professional silos that constitute the production of our built environment. Most recently he has worked with scenic craftspeople at the Royal Opera House, designing and managing the build of Opera and Ballet sets. He likes to study the histories behind a building’s conception, construction, appearance, and use.
Through the residency Alastair plans to test encounters between scenography and inhabitation, developed from his work in the fields of theatre and housing design. These experiments will first and foremost be tectonic: appropriating the concepts, techniques and fixings commonly found in scenic construction. This could include mechanical inventions using ropes, fabric, pulleys, and sandbags, or it could involve timber constructions that utilize standardized fixings for the aim of disassembly and reuse – a common concern when designing sets for rep theatres or touring shows. In keeping with the material aims of Vares Space, he will use found materials wherever possible, exploring how reuse creatively informs a design process and output. The exact function or form of these ‘scenographic’ constructions will be deduced during the residency, perhaps aiding the action of collective inhabitation, or acting as symbolic backdrops based on observations and conversations.
You can come and see the exhibition “Living Space” displaying Alastair’s inventions on February 24 and 25.
→ CALL IS CLOSED AND RESIDENTS CONFIRMED → Residency period: 1–2 months during February–December 2024 → Individuals & collectives from different disciplines → Funded residency + travel support → Applications were open until November 20, 2023
How do we act as architects in a world where spatial practices are driven by market logic? Where building new is preferred over repairing the existing? Where standardised architecture and design is overproduced while unique and regional vernacular techniques are disappearing? Could it be that the standardisation of ways of making and their concentration only in the hands of specialists manifests itself over time in the spaces around us and in the lives that are lived there, losing the unexpected, original and strange?
Somewhat idealistic in our approach, we seek to rethink and practise alternative ways of creating spaces, using already existing places and materials from urban and peripheral environments. We explore manual crafts in architecture by combining old techniques with new technologies and skills while always bearing in mind the wider picture: where materials come from, how long can a building last and what happens after. Instead of building new, our focus is on maintenance – how to creatively refurbish, retrofit and reuse existing spaces, how to harvest and reuse both valuable and fast fashion materials for new projects. Though more time consuming, the extended life cycle of materials is one of the core beliefs of the residency.
With delicate and sparing approach to materials and reuse as an indisputable starting point, we also encourage residents to explore various topics of their own interest, vast or small – from reinventing everyday routines, domestic spaces or objects with an imaginative angle to it, to research-based urban explorations or speculative utopianism and societal critique.
The residency and the town of Valga will become the stage and testing ground for the artists’ projects.The VARES building, a two-storey house that for the past hundred years has been used as a school, will transform into a “House Museum” that will embody the ideas, amusing inventions and theories proposed, researched and built in the residency.
The Open Call was available for both individuals and groups to apply. The timeframe of attending the residency is approximately 1-2 months. From each resident we expect a presentation, exhibition or event surrounding their work to be shown at the end of the residency, for the Valga public and wider audience in Estonia and Latvia.
The choice of residents was made by the VARES curators and project managers Margus Tammik, Mari Möldre, Merilin Kaup, Triin Reidla and Ulla Alla.
In the first days of November, architecture students of the 1st year of Estonian Academy of Arts settled in VARES for an introduction to the Shelter course. Shelters are projects made during the first year of architecture studies – experiments with space, form and material on the scale of the human body. Since this year decaying building heritage is treated as a potential building material, the introduction also included field work in abandoned buildings: exploring around, observations with both eyes and hands, including peeking inside the walls and floors, reflections and making conclusions.
Tutors: Elina Liiva, Helena Rummo, Margus Tammik, Mari Möldre, Merilin Kaup
Thank you, @pilvel6hkujad, for filling the house with warmth!
CALL: SKETCHY MATERIAL WASTELAND – RESIDENTS CONFIRMED!
Until October 10th 2023, VARES held an open call for a 2-month funded group residency dedicated to the sketchy materials used in homes and offices around us. Looking at the short life cycle of MDF, OSB and other particle boards used in fast fashion architecture and furniture design, we invite artists, architects and other cultural practitioners to rebuild or destroy the reputation of the simple particle board.
This open call focuses on the theme of “sketchy materials”, referring to the unreliable, dishonest, shady substances that make up a lot of the furniture, walls and floors around us. The growing discussion about material reuse mostly focuses on natural materials (wood, stone and metal), non-composite matter that can be relatively easily disassembled and repurposed for new needs. Recycling and repurposing becomes a lot more tricky with lesser-valued factory produced composite materials like particle boards (MDF, OSB or imitation wood). The low grade formaldehyde soaked boards with a relatively short life cycle are unvalued due to the challenges it brings with repurposing them for new needs and environments. With every IKEA cupboard left behind, every refurbished school or office, more sketchy materials are forgotten, thrown out and discarded. With the poor structural integrity goes hand in hand the debate of material value, how culturally some materials are considered good or bad, and how fast fashion furniture design ends up quickly in the gutters and landfills. The open call is to cultivate an explorative, bricoleurish mindset that always finds ways to work with any kind of materials and found objects, while avoiding mass-produced virgin materials, closing the material loop and creating behavioural change when it comes to how and what kinds of objects we surround ourselves with.
We invited cultural practitioners, architects, students, spatial artists, writers, anyone working and rethinking about the matter and spaces around us to experiment with the sketchy materials. The goal for the residents is to experiment, research, write, rebuild or destroy the reputation of unvalued, toxic, cheap materials, to find meaning in the particle board itself. In the end, the materials around us in their current state, natural or factory made, are the main building blocks for future projects.
The open call was available for both individuals and groups (max 3 people) from the Creative Europe countries to apply. The residency period is two months, 17.06.2024–15.08.2024, and it will end with a group exhibition, which will also be the kick-off event of the 2024 VARES summer school.
In summer 2023, we sent out a call to our colleagues, friends and acquaintances to take part in the activities to adapt the house located at Uus 35 in Valga into a residency and a meeting place for spatial artists. The sessions were spread over two weeks in August: 31.07.–6.08. and 21.–27.08.
During this time, we collectively took on and shared tasks that focused on construction and repair, collection and reuse of old materials, and installation of functions necessary for life in the residency. With the power of group work, we managed to freshen up the lobby area, create a brand new kitchen and dining space, as well as a spa bathroom, all mostly using repurposed elements.
On Saturday, August 26th, we held an open doors day for locals and a party to celebrate with all the helpers. Altogether, over 30 volunteers came to paint, build, clean, tile, invent, discuss, cook and/or hang out. We thank them all very much!
In spring 2023, we tutored the 2nd year interior architecture students of the Estonian Academy of Arts in their semester studio, “Educational Space”. This course focused on hands-on and conceptual expression skills and searched for the possibilities and forms of the “self-educational space” through research, activities, experiments, documentation, reading, formulating and thinking.
In April, we spent a week together at the freshly accessed VARES residency building, and in May the students presented their processes and interactions in the old school house. The themes and topics dissected drying and dying, time, fragility, frustration, forgetting, concentration, comas, moments.
Students/first residents: Marleen Armulik, Katarina Ild, Laura Movits, Getter Pihlak, Elle Marie Randoja, Jaan Repnikov, Sven Christian Arthur Samyn, Mirjam Vaht. Supervisors: Ulla Alla, Merilin Kaup, Mari Möldre, Margus Tammik, Malle Jürgenson. Guest critics: Gregor Taul, Alina Nurmist.
VARES architecture residency is located in a school house built in 1936, which has been used as a boarding school for girls and, lately, an adult distance learning high school.
The residency now has comfortable corners for living, yet the building itself is left raw and open for the residing artists to work on and in.
In addition to 15 wood-fired stoves, the house has two floors, 14 rooms, 4 cubbyholes, a cellar and an attic. Log walls behind brick walls painted dark red, stone foundations and a dark puddle under the concrete vaults in the basement.
Over time, the initial elements have been lined with layers. The original timber floor topped with fiberboard and linoleum. A number of covered-up doors revealed within the walls. Nine layers of paint. And much more. A house like mille-feuille.
Q: What is the residency programme of VARES going to look like? Who should apply?
A: The aim of Valga Architecture Residency or VARES is to host residents, seminars and workshops dealing with spatial practices. The two storey residency building will slowly be transformed into a house museum, a collection of experiments, spatial interventions and ideas left behind by the residents living there.
We welcome international and interdisciplinary residents and guests who wish to experiment with circular materials and handicraft methods, engage with the unique geopolitical position of Valga, do some thematic mental exercises and contribute to creating inspiring alternative spatial experiences for oneself as well as the community.
We are announcing the open call for 2024 residents in fall 2023. Residents will be welcome from February 2024. The length of the residency period is regularly around one month. We are also able to offer a small stipend to each resident. The residency period should involve or culminate with a public event of some kind: exhibition, lecture, open studio, opening of an installation or something similar.
Residents are encouraged to use the building of VARES as a research object and environment to develop during the residency, but also to engage with the urban and rural spaces and communities in and around Valga.
In short, we welcome: → both practitioners and theorists → people working both individually as well as collectively → especially people from the Baltic and Nordic regions, but also elsewhere in the world → also professional collectives who wish to use the space for a conference or workshop of their own
In addition to the regular residency programme, which will involve a number of public events, VARES will be hosting winter and summer schools and university courses for spatial design students.
In 2024, we will also organise a thematic intensive residency entitled “Sketchy materials wasteland” for a group of different residents. A separate open call is organised for this.
Information about all open calls and public events will be available on our Instagram, Facebook and newsletter.
Q: What are the accommodation and living conditions at VARES like?
A: VARES has a functioning kitchen and washing facilities, one properly furnished bedroom and resources for a larger number of sleeping places, including for babies and children.
The residency is located at Uus 35 in Valga. There are many shops and food establishments nearby. The building is 5 minutes by foot from the Valga town centre. The residency offers a couple of bikes as means of transport around the town and additional engine assistance can be arranged (vans, cars etc.).
The building has two floors with seven rooms on each of them. The whole house is heated with stoves, which is something the resident will have to engage with also themself (at least partly). During colder seasons, the house is going to shrink, meaning we will only use the rooms which we can keep warm.
There is no one permanently staying at VARES, and we also don’t have a specialised house manager. Anyone staying at VARES should allocate at least an hour of their day to care for the household, since domesticating it is the collective handwork of all of us.
Q: Why make an architecture residency in Valga? How do I get there?
A: A part of our team was co-organising the large international alternative architecture education summer school EASA Apathy in 2020. In 2023, thanks to the Valga municipality’s architect Jiri Tintera and the South Estonian programme of Tartu 2024 Capital of Culture, we got the opportunity to establish a spatial arts residency into an old schoolhouse previously inhabited by Valga Distance Learning High School.
Valga is the southernmost town of Estonia with 12 000 inhabitants, located on the border – just 400 meters from VARES, you can step into the Latvian town of Valka and wander around the exciting contemporary twin city urban space created in the past few years. On the one hand, Valga is a typical Eastern European industrial town with a decreasing population, where many abandoned and decaying structures are awaiting their fate. On the other hand, the multinational, human-scale, self-initiated atmosphere of Valga makes for an inspiring context to experiment with the urgent topics of today – degrowth, recycling and survival skills.
The society’s goals are to give an input to the quality of Estonian architecture, spatial culture and education. We aim to give additional value and involve various disciplines to the educational landscape of architecture. We take part in discussions regarding our surroundings and we try to build a network to bring different discplines more together. To achieve these goals, we have initiated an architecture oriented residency building in Valga, Estonia.
Margus is a freelance architect based in Estonia. He graduated from the department of architecture and urban planning at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) in 2021, experimenting with spatial education for middle, high and university students throughout the years. Most of his projects are also involved with educational and creative spaces, either as an artist or curator at various biennials or through the self-initiated garage gallery Garaaž49. As a spatial creator, Margus is passionate about everything we create with our hands, sense with our bodies and experience through events, practising it under the initiative Hands Doing Things.
ULLA ALLA
Founder of VARES
Ulla is an architect and spatial artist working in Estonia and Georgia. She is one of the founder of the GRBGKDS (Garbage Kids) collective in Tbilisi, that focuses on carpentry, collectable furniture and restoration. She has been a freelance lecturer and tutor since 2018 at EKA and runs workshops both in Estonia and abroad. Her current creative work concentrates on handy activities and material experimentation, playing with dust, wood and other leftover materials.
MERILIN KAUP
Founder of VARES
MARI MÖLDRE
Founder of VARES
TRIIN REIDLA
Founder of VARES
MARIA MUUK
Graphic designer of VARES
Maria is a freelance graphic designer who mainly practices in the Estonian cultural sphere and researches local print design histories. In creating visual materials for VARES, she investigates methods of using non-digital graphic design tools, heritage technologies and available physical materials for contemporary visual communication outputs.
Website programmed by Patrick Zavadskis Typeface: Katlamaja by Aimur Takk (Tüpokompanii)
