Dezeen Magazine

Old Town Apartments in Tallinn by Kosmos

Estonian architects Kosmos have completed a five-storey apartment block with a ground-floor shopping area in Tallinn, Estonia.

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Conceived as a series of interconnected units, the building is broken into facets and punctured by shard-like windows.

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The structure is made of steel frames and reinforced concrete.

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It has a stone-tiled facade and each apartment has a wooden terrace.

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Photographs are by Ott Kadarik and Paco Ulman.

Here's some text from the architects:

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The 5-story apartment building is situated on the edge of the medieval old town of Tallinn.

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It is not dominant from the street level, nor does it seem too high in the surrounding context.

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The dynamic mass of the building is situated in the northern and western side of the plot.

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In connection with some old historically valuable buildings, it creates an environment of small interconnected units, characteristic to the architectural whole of the old town.

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Every apartment has a large terrace, bringing private house typology into the very center of the city.

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The ground level opens to the street as an active shopping space.

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The construction of the building is a combination of reinforced concrete and steel frames.

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The non-supporting walls are finished with natural stone tiles, making the building visually smaller, while alluding to the surrounding stone houses of the old town.

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The timber-clad terraces and the horizontal surfaces of the overhangs link the apartment block to the neighboring wooden house, while decomposing the building´s volume into a variety of spaces.

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It is an inner-city landscape house of different qualities.

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Architects:

Ott Kadarik, Villem Tomiste, Mihkel Tüür

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