The studio conceives architecture as an art of fabrication, creating architecture holistically, carefully combining elements we believe should be viewed as works of art in their own right. This is achieved through genuine collaboration with multidisciplinary creators and clients from various backgrounds, recognising the distinct value they bring to each project. Since early 2019, the studio has engaged in an experimental research project entitled ‘Architecture of By-products’ which explores urban wastes as potential architectural materials and urban storytellers.

PAN- PROJECTS continues an ongoing research project, Architecture of By-products during the stay at VARES. The project explores the potential of urban by-products, also known as waste, to be used as a resource for architectural materials. They conceive by-products as urban storytellers that allow us to observe and relate architectural projects directly with their community. By the end of the project, they will produce a series of Architectural Fragments, to be presented at the public exhibition alongside the selected by-product. As they curate their work in the exhibition, the by-products unveil the unseen story of the town.

Päär Keedus and Karolin Kull are in VARES to experiment. 

Is it possible to make sense of the city as a space, and of space as a theoretical and empirical sense of the environment, through a sense of the non-space? To create an informal space, a thing?

Each thing would symbolize a homage to site-specificity. 

They will excavate the city. 
How do materials meet each other?
They want to promote slow architecture and slow living. To challenge conventional standards of spatial beauty in their work. Does beauty also lie in pragmatism and functionality?
They don’t want to over-romanticise the self-architecture of poverty and lack of resources, but to see beauty in this ultimate pragmatism. Is the lack of means the seed of ingenuity? Why do we build anything at all?

To imagine a reality where self-architecture is embedded in every structure.

The opening of their installation KÄNDLIK takes place on July 15th at 8 pm in Valga.

She is particularly interested in diverse matters – from contributions to bettering social justice, gender equality to documenting poetic details in built environments or mundane moments.

For two months Sandra Mirka will be working within a community and seek ways to add value to the foodspaces of the domain by cooking, organising and (re)building needed functions. After graduating with a master’s degree in interior architecture, her master thesis was a research on the topic of domestic kitchens.

She feels as if kitchen design nowadays can be often predicted and less spontaneous. Particleboards like MDF and OSB are ruling the scene, which can look bland as a frozen pizza from the supermarket. There are connections between spatial design and the ways we cook and deal with food. Sandra is in the residency to explore and play with the connections by using as little new resources as possible.

Sandra collects the thoughts she has developed during her residency on her website, check it out.

The group residency is part of the Culture Moves Europe and is funded by the European Union.

They are currently working on their doctoral dissertation in Tampere university, but they are based in Helsinki. Their research concentrates on planning situations in ecological transition that get stuck because of cultural and ideological economic norms. Next to their academic efforts they are dedicated crochet, repair and DIY enthusiast and degrowth lifestyle beginner, aiming to emphasize collaboration, peer learning and community. Emel is an active member in You Tell Me -collective.

During the residency period, Emel Tuupainen will be concentrating on understanding the history and development strategies of Valga county and understanding local experiences regarding the future and ecological transition. They will write an essay about the connection of the local to the international systems through the theme of material and energy circulation.

The group residency is part of the Culture Moves Europe and is funded by the European Union.

They are interested in assembling collections, noticing and cherishing invisible layers of fragility, care, and secrecy intertwining with spatial context. In the past few years, they have been exploring various forms and platforms to alternatively practice architecture. In 2023, the duo curated an annual architecture students workshop SIKON in Kintai, Lithuania digging into exploited landscapes of Aukštumala swamp, draining of which was started in soviet times and is continuing today. Most recent research is with Baltic Lines, where the duo is focusing on Vilnius, exploring the nearby railway district of Naujininkai, which is facing the railway station renewal project. They are patiently assembling accumulated layers of old buildings in the district and giving them a new meaning.

The duo is deeply curious about circularity and reuse. While these topics are reoccurring more often in practical form, they choose to approach them in a rather poetical way, looking softly and with tender care into material’s surfaces, layers as if into personas, trying to read the stories behind or creating them. Their amazement lies in the cracks, the impurities, worn-off parts of the surfaces. They are also wondering about life cycles of materials, the composition – smallest particles, the invisible but crucial layer. The direction they plan to take is shifting the gaze – what if we start seeing and treating relatively cheap mass-manufactured used furniture plates as individual and unique, minding too the sketchy parts of their composition? 

This group residency is part of the Culture Moves Europe programme and is funded by the European Union.

He has recently succesfully defended his PhD Dissertation called ‘Living (at) Home. On Older People’s Making of Home and Dignity’. In this research, he critically investigated the intersections of ageing, home, dwelling, and dignity. 

During his time in Valga, Jakob will shift more towards artistic research, scenography in particular. He is looking for ignored potential across the built environment. How do we interact with space and how does that space in turn react to us? Through research and artistic-performative practice Jakob attempts to answer this question during the period in VARES. 

The group residency is part of the Culture Moves Europe programme and is funded by the European Union.

Baltic Lines: Reflections on Urban Transformation and Connectivity along Rail Baltica’s Passage is an artistic research network reflecting on the Rail Baltica railway infrastructure megaproject, which aims to integrate Baltic countries into the European railway network. The project involves eleven artists–researchers from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, and Sweden, who follow the creation of Rail Baltica and study topics such as the concept of the Baltic region, archiving as a political practice, and documenting megaprojects. In October, the project exhibition will open at the IN THE CLOSET gallery in Vilnius.

Project was initiated by Diāna Mikāne, Paula Veidenbauma 
Baltic Lines artists researchers: Mattias Malk (EE), Eglė Šimėnaitė (LT), Valtteri Alanen (FI), Sofie Lucia Maria Carlson (SWE), Katariin Mudist (EE), Kamilė Vasiliauskaitė (LT), Aistė Gaidilionytė (LT), Gustavs Grasis (LV), Diāna Mikāne (LV), Paula Veidenbauma (LV), Danute Līva (LV)

He was born and raised in Seoul, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. His recent works have been shown at various art venues in South Korea and the U.S. For the VARES residency, he proposes to open a repair workshop aimed at local people. This endeavour aims to leverage his skills as an artist, professional woodworker, and amateur seamster to benefit the Valga community.

Come and see the renewed objects at the exhibition on June 15 at the Valga train station.

“I am interested in what spaces unfold when we let go of functionality, aesthetic sense, and learned norms (let’s imagine it is possible). We may not be able to peer into another person’s being, but can we create a space that evokes the sensation of being inside someone else’s body? What role does physical space play in an increasingly virtual world and vice versa?

In 2020, life took me to Rakvere, an empty apartment in a small town in Estonia. I didn’t choose that place; it was a free space outside my home to go and be alone during the lockdowns. I started to visit the apartment and observe myself and the traces I left there. I followed what was already there and asked myself what I needed and for what. From where comes the wish to change something, why what I already have is not enough? Through this way of being, I created three online pieces. In 2022, the apartment was open for people to visit on the spot and online during the international performing arts festival Baltoscandal under the title  ‘Where Are You?’.

That’s how I enter Valga and VARES—like going in front of the mirror and asking, ‘Where am I?’ Or like placing a piece of material, a human body, in an environment and observing how it reacts. I’ll  take notes and recordings, I let my attention lead and will be sharing my practice, found paths and spaces with you on the 11th of May.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

STUUDIO KOLLEKTIIV is 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’

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 six 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.

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.