Estonian National Museum

in 2004, Estonia has since embarked upon a rapid programme of social and economic reform. The aspiration of the Estonian Ministry of Culture for a new Estonian National Museum, to be located in the city of Tartu, is testament to this quest for a reawakened pride in national identity and a unique cultural history. The international competition for the design and execution of this 34 000 m² museum building, housing a collection of 140 000 objects, launched in 2005.

The Architects proposal for this Museum challenged the competition brief. Instead of locating the building on the proposed site, they chose to reappropriate a nearby former Soviet military base as the setting for the Museum - a physically present ‘ruin’ of a painful history. They believed that the new Museum should play an essential role in the regeneration of the area and to do so it had to start by dealing with this heavily charged and spatially unique place. With a sensitive implementation on this site, the National Museum becomes a continuation of the airfield – its roof lifting and expanding towards ‘infinite space’- inviting the visitor to enter into the landscape and into the heart of the museum.

The design aims to create an open house for public activities – exhibition, performance, learning - a place of gathering and interaction, bringing people together to celebrate a rich, if sometimes painful, history.

The abandoned runway can in its forlorn and unused state be viewed as a dramatic space. Essentially an airstrip, it is, however, no more an airstrip. It is a stretch of wasteland, an eerie open space with history, an empty space branded with the stigma of military exploitation to which this entry seeks to give a future. For this space to be more “vocal” the design proposes an extension of this empty space. The slightly tilted roof—a symbolic reference to a takeoff into the sky, to meet one’s destiny —would form a so-called roof plaza overlooking the surrounding landscape.

The Competition

On January 16th, the winning works of the international architecture competition held to design the new Estonian National Museum building and their authors were revealed at a public session of the competition jury. The best work, entitled “Memory Field,” was by an international group of architects based in Paris and Italian-Israeli Dan Dorell, French Lebanese Lina Ghotmeh and Japanese Tsuyoshi Tane, (work group Deidre O’Neill, John G Williams, Niccolo Baldassini). The architecture competition to design the new Estonian National Museum building, announced last June, was organized by the Estonian National Museum, the Estonian Ministry of Culture and the Estonian Architects Association.

The goal of the architecture competition is to achieve the best architectural solution for the new Estonian National Museum building complex, including planning of the grounds. The deadline for submission of competition works was 14 November 2005. A total of 108 entries were received by the Estonian Architects Association. The Estonian National Museum hopes that the museum will be ready by 2009, the centenary of the founding of the museum.

The organization of the architecture competition was funded by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia. The exhibition of best works in the architecture competition will be open from 18 Jan-26 Feb 2006 in the Exhibition House of the Estonian National Museum in Tartu (J. Kuperjanovi 9) and from 3-26 March 2006 at the Estonian Museum of Architecture in Tallinn.

Estonian Ministry of culture, Estonian National Museum
Client Representative:
Heritage operator and state estates operator RKAS

Dorell.Ghotmeh.Tane / Architects
Lina Ghotmeh (FR-LB), Dan Dorell (IT-IL), Tsuyoshi Tane (JP)
Team: Alexandros Mykoniatis (GR), Cécile Combelle (FR), Daisuke Sekine (JP), David Agudo (ES), Emma Bush (UK), Emmanuelle Stalla-Bourdillon (FR), Carlotta Fontana (IT), Gaëtan Kohler (FR), Helene Lennartsson (SE), Mathias Klöpfel (DE), Masayuki Ninomiya ( JP), Ricardo Guerra (PT), Ross Perkin (IE), Ryosuke Motohashi (JP), Sarah Alexandra Castle (GB), Sony Devabhakutuni (US), Valérie Mayer (FR), Yasmin Sfar (TN), Yuzu Fukunaga (JP)

Execution Architects: HGA and PILLE LAUSMÄE
Structure and Mechanical Design: ARUP (competition stage), EA Reng AS (contract)
Acoustic design: LINDA MADALIK
Landscaping: BUREAU BAS SMETS: Preliminary Desif b
KINO: local Landscape architects
Lighting Design: ATELIER HERVE AUDIBERT