Tamula Lakeside
Voru, Estonia
Two-stage competition
Design Team:
Principal: Sean Lally
(Viktor Ramos, Marina Nicollier)
Executive Architect: Morris Architects, Houston
Urban planning is generally associated with a process of program allocation and sitting. The program volumes are then tethered to a particular infrastructure that provides access and resources. Such planning strategies can often be one-dimensional in their approach, resulting in a rigid and isolating organization of space. Existing regional climates and local site micro-climates are rarely operated upon, and only defended against. Yet they play a large role in a program’s use, acting as the determining factor in the spatial allocation of programmatic activity over the course of a year. These climatic materialities (artificial or otherwise) have proved to be just as important in a site’s organization as the structures built to house specific programs and activities. They can also play equally essential roles in large spatial and city planning. Many – if not most – activities at the urban scale, such as recreational and commercial activities and traffic circulation through a town or city, are linked to meet the program and activity needs of the site while simultaneously addressing seasonal planning: an attempt to consider how activities change throughout the course of the year while also creating opportunities for their artificial extension. These re neither landscapes nor building strategies, but climatic strategies.
The glass pyramidal shapes span the voids in each building’s mass. By capping the voids, they trap energy from the sun and building systems, transferring it through the voids and onto the landscape below.
Gradient climates zones are created on the ground floor of each of the buildings, growing and shrinking with the seasonal changes. These gradient parks shift in size and intensity, often spilling and and connecting with each other in milder seasons, while shrinking and acting as disperate spaces in the more extreme winter months.
Existing climate and seasonal variability (artificial or otherwise) is just as important a consideration for urban organization as the structures built to house specific programs. Local climatic manipulations are made possible by harnessing the available energy as a form of infrastructure.
