The Ethereal Pavilion
The city of Tartu’s requirement of new cultural facilities in the downtown area is conflicted by the city’s need for the valuable public green space of the Central Park. The primary challenge of this intervention, therefore, is to sensitively negotiate between both these irrevocable requisites.
At the urban scale, the green stretch from the Toomemägi through Barclay Square and Central Park, extending all the way to the Riverside Park is reinforced as an ecological corridor with continuous soil and permeable surfaces. To integrate the Central Park within the urban realm, the Turu Cultural centre is proposed as a pavilion built to the south of Kauba street. The northern side is left unbuilt as part of the green corridor. The exercise and sports activities like an open-air gym and the skating rink are relocated to the north of the Central Park. The Barclay Square and Riverside parks are revived with local grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs to attract various species of birds and insects. The Vabaduse Avenue is re-imagined with well-defined pedestrian and bicycle lanes free of kerbstones separated by rows of trees on both sides.
The cultural centre, nestled within the dense canopy of existing trees, is volumetrically inverse of the perimeter-block found in the urban context of the old town. Its ground floor is an extension of the park offering an extensive pavilion-like shaded space for various park activities. It is accessible from all sides except the south, thus largely preserving the park’s openness and invites the passer-by to explore the cultural facilities.
The building is structured through repeating modules organised around existing trees. The nine trees that fall within the compact footprint, anchor the courtyards within the building. This puncturing of the building volume to create tree-courts naturally ventilates and lights the internal spaces. It also enhances the experience of the park by enabling vertical ascension around the trees.
The ground floor pavilion accommodates the accesses to the library, event centre and art museum that each function autonomously with independent service-cores. It also serves as a public foyer and encourages interaction between the various cultural institutions. The underground levels host the event centre with rental spaces, the cinema, the broadcast rooms and other technical spaces. The programmatic areas for the library and the museum are organised on the upper floors. The volumes are vertically staggered and the top most level has a roof-top restaurant with extended views of the green corridor and the old town to the north.
The repetition of a single structural module simplifies any additions or modification required to the layouts, including dismantling or repairing the system. This ensures that the building is functionally adaptable for future use. Flexibility and adaptability are central to the design vision, inherently making the building sustainable. This coupled with the use of PV panels on the roof-top help reduce the carbon footprint of the intervention. The building pavilion merges with the landscape and creates an ethereal structure with floating and translucent volumes.