Exhibition “A Matter of Scale: Tallinn” opening

Graduation design studio
A Matter of Scale
Methods of Analysis and Imagination Group
Department of Architecture – Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment
Delft University of Technology

The quality of life in European cities is inseparable from their human scale.

The masters’ graduation design studio A Matter of Scale, developed and taught in Delft University of Technology by the group Methods of Analysis and Imagination since 2023, examines and evaluates architectural teaching and learning processes with a strong focus on the urban effects of analyzing and designing architecture vis-à-vis the human scale.

The twenty projects collected here have examined this question in relation to Tallinn, where that human scale is constantly challenged by buildings and urban plans of very different sizes. Layers of Hanseatic, modern, Soviet, and contemporary market-driven developments coexist as much as they clash in Tallinn, conditioned as they are by the city’s distinct natural and cultural conditions.

By integrating analytical and design-based research, the group of young architects behind these projects offer us a clear picture of the contextual and disciplinary consequences of scaling buildings and cities in relation to the human beings who conceive, build, and inhabit them.

Through their work, the city of Tallinn appears as a blooming urban context in need of permanent restoration, careful densification, and targeted innovation; through strategies of modularity, reprogramming, and completion; and by combining familiar as well as innovative architectural languages and building techniques in the city’s consolidating centralities.

Tallinn also appears through these projects as a city of contrasting textures; of limestone, timber and ceramic tiles, which are complemented by the smoothness of glass, steel and concrete.

Developed in partnership with Estonian students, scholars, and professionals from local institutions, these twenty projects reflect a careful examination and evaluation of key aspects of the city; which will hopefully contribute to advancing a vibrant contemporary Estonian architecture culture, where they originated.

2025 – Tallinn (Estonia)

Students: Adrienne Woo Woon Cheong, Agne Daugintyte, Bas Molenaar, Beate Verbeek, Bálint Duma, Daniel Friedrich, Daryln Sia En Lyn, Eline Habraken, Eline de Winter, Ginger Kant, Hao Feng Chuah, Jarl Stok, Liza Verdonk, Marieke van der Linde, Matas Šukys, Neema Gohari, Rojin Sanati Masbughi, Ruben Afman, Samuele Pesce, Tanyadhorn Dumrongkijkarn, Tjitske Henstra, Yan Kiu Lam

Tutors: Jorge Mejía Hernández, Klaske Havik, Matthijs Klooster, Pierre Jennen

Local Partners: Andres Ojari – Estonian Academy of Arts / Laura Linsi and Roland Reema – LLRRLLRR