Stages of Democracy

Abstract

Our notion of the public sphere is inherently tied to Western ideas of democracy, as the domain where political decisions are being debated. However, the implosion of official communism and the consequent neoliberal onslaught have fundamentally altered the conception of public space. The availability of space in which public roles can be performed has been drastically reduced, as large organisations strive for political compromises with the state and with each other excluding the public whenever possible. However, spaces near symbols of national importance are inherently charged with political meaning, allowing citizens to position their claims for or against their symbolic values.

In Tallinn, the castle on Toompea hill still accommodates political power (government offices and the parliament), and the conservational approach at this UNESCO world heritage site preserves the medieval hierarchies. The open spaces surrounding the Old Town – the ring of old fortifications - are allocated for recreational use only, including private, commercialized venues as the result of the privatization process in the 90s. Therefore, politically charged events happen elsewhere, detached from the venues of the formal public sphere which, I argue, constitutes a democratic deficit in spatial terms.

Stages of Democracy explores how the immediate vicinity of the Estonian Parliament can be transformed through architectural interventions to accommodate spaces appropriate for performative representation, proposing a novel approach to design public spaces in historically, culturally, and ecologically important locations.

The proposed design aims to build upon the traditions of the site rather than replacing them; nationalising the private sports fields opens the opportunity to add to its uses by providing an appropriable infrastructure for public events. The main architectural intervention is a new theatre, which provides a protected indoor environment for the square to remain usable all year round. Built along an existing retaining wall and partially carved into the hill, the building’s volume is carefully placed to minimise its impact both on the available space for public gatherings and the ecology of the site. The external appearance of the theatre is defined by a large colonnade, which grants the square its public essence. The retractable seating units of the auditorium can be rearranged for various stage layouts and can be rolled out between the columns onto the square for events. The roughly treated bricks of the facade form an interlocking pattern, as if the monolithic Toompea hill got fragmented to little pieces, which then reassembled to form something greater than the sum of their parts. Atop the building, a tower serves as a beacon for ‘looking the president in the eye’, and as an appropriable infrastructure for the public to present their claims using the castle as a backdrop.

Two basic elements of architecture, the column and the tower characterise the project. At a place which is about the physical presence of humans, about seeing bodies and being seen, these vertical elements are important reference points. As suggested by the etymology of words like ‘capital’ (from late Latin capitellum ‘little head’), their origins lie in comparisons to the human body, and therefore relate the human scale (bodies) to the architectural (column) and the urban (tower).