The 5th Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB 2019) has announced the winner as Steampunk for its 2019 Installation Programme Competition "Huts and Habitats". 

The open two-stage competition invited emerging architectural talents to design an experimental wooden structure in the heart of Tallinn, considering new technologies in relation to Estonia’s rich history of timber construction.

The jury, comprised of Areti Markopoulou (IAAC, Spain), Philippe Block (ETH Zurich; NCCR, Switzerland), and Mihkel Tüür (KTA, Estonia), selected Steampunk by SoomeenHahm Design, Igor Pantic and Fologram (UK), from among 137 submissions from around the world.

"The winning project challenges the idea of the primitive hut – showing how, by using algorithmic logic, simple raw materials can be turned into a highly complex and inhabitable structure", asserts Gilles Retsin, TAB 2019’s Installation Programme Curator.

As material expertise and traditional craftsmanship gradually succumb to the promises of bespoke design customisation via CNCN machines and 3D printers, the team has focused on a hybrid approach that reinterprets the primitive tools of architecture from a contemporary perspective.

The result is a proposal for a pavilion made of steam-bent timber elements, using analogue tools augmented with the precision of mixed reality environments. It explores an adaptive design and fabrication system that is resilient to wide variations in material behaviour and fabrication accuracy, occupying a fuzzy in-between that is neither purely analogue nor purely automated. Steampunk explores a path to rethink applications and traditions of craft in pursuit of their evolution.   

"The winning entry consists of a bespoke merging of craft, immersive technologies and material performance, for the production of dynamic organic forms that surpass building limitations of local precision or of the pure automate. We are all excited and challenged to follow the emergence of such built work, which integrates lessons from nature and is the outcome of a vital human-machine collaboration," stated Areti Markopoulou, Head of the Jury.

The installation will be built in August 2019 in the lively pedestrian green area facing the Museum of Estonian Architecture and will open to the public during TAB 2019 Opening Week on September 11th, 2019. The structure will remain in place until the next edition of the event in 2021.

Also on the podium stand are second prize winners Déborah López, Hadin Charbel and Patrick Donbeck (Thailand) with their project Expired Beauty and third prize winners Plethora Project – José Sanchez (USA) with the project Combonest.

The works by all winners and all Stage II participants will be displayed at the TAB Installation Programme exhibition, and published on the TAB 2019 website and in its catalogue.

Steampunk Time Frame:
August 2019 – construction
September 11th, 2019  – Opening
 
Steampunk Credits:
Design by: SoomeenHahm Design, Igor Pantic, Fologram
Project team: Soomeen Hahm, Igor Pantic, Gwyllim Jahn, Cam Newnham, Nick van den Berg, Hanjun Kim, Kiheung Kwon, Eri Sumitomo, Katerina Konstantinidou, Jakub Klaska

All images © Steampunk

> via TAB 2019