KuristiScale - Putting into Proportion
Ines Johanna Grimm, Fiona Köhler
The project “KuristiScale – Putting into Proportion” addresses the spatial and social challenges of Kuristiku, a micro-district in the northern part of Lasnamäe in Tallinn. The area accommodates approximately 11,000 residents within a compact territory of only 0.84 km² and is largely shaped by late Soviet housing developments from the 1980s. The urban structure is dominated by repetitive prefabricated panel buildings of five to nine stories, surrounded by fragmented and poorly defined open spaces. While the district has a relatively high residential density, it currently suffers from physical deterioration, limited investment, and spatial isolation caused by surrounding major road corridors.
A detailed analysis revealed both potentials and challenges within the district. On one hand, Kuristiku offers large open areas and a clear structural framework that could support future transformation. On the other hand, the analysis highlighted a fundamental problem: the lack of an appropriate spatial scale. The district currently operates on a uniform, large-scale level that does not correspond to everyday human needs. This results in monotonous environments, inactive ground floors, underused public spaces, and a lack of social interaction.
The project therefore focuses on re-scaling Kuristiku as its central design strategy. The aim is to introduce a hierarchy of spatial scales, from the district scale to the neighborhood scale and finally to the human scale. By establishing these transitions, the project seeks to create a more legible, accessible, and resilient urban environment that supports everyday life and strengthens community interaction.
To achieve this transformation, several key objectives were defined. First, the proposal aims to break up the monofunctional land-use structure by introducing mixed-use typologies that combine housing, services, and community functions. This diversification is intended to generate economic activity and activate currently underused areas. Second, the project emphasizes the creation of inclusive public spaces for all age groups, ensuring year-round usability and encouraging social exchange between generations. Third, existing natural elements are strengthened and expanded to support ecological resilience, improve microclimatic conditions, and enhance environmental quality.
These goals are implemented through a toolbox of spatial strategies tailored to the specific conditions of Kuristiku. The strategies include activating ground floors, redefining open spaces, improving pedestrian and cycling networks, and introducing new programs that encourage public use. Together, these interventions form a flexible framework that allows the district to evolve gradually while maintaining its structural identity.
Ultimately, KuristiScale proposes a transformation from a monotonous large-scale housing district into a human-centered, socially diverse, and environmentally resilient neighborhood. By rethinking scale and spatial relationships, the project demonstrates how existing modernist housing areas can be adapted to meet contemporary urban needs.
Completing an Unfinished Vision
Sven Spallek, Marco Tarrio Torres
Our project examines the history and Soviet legacy of Tallinn, with a focus on Lasnamäe. Tallinn has three large housing areas that developed differently. Väike-Õismäe has a concentric form around a central lake. Mustamäe has a cluster structure, ongoing infill development, and a more human scale. Lasnamäe, in contrast, has a linear structure with very large scales and oversized open spaces.
Lasnamäe was planned and built in several construction phases, and many parts remained unfinished after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The planning focused strongly on mobility, particularly highways, which were designed in great detail. At the same time, the districts were built with repeating housing typologies and a strict separation of functions. Public buildings were concentrated in district centers, while workplaces were located elsewhere. Kuristiku, located in construction phase 7, is one of the last planned areas.
Our analysis shows that the Soviet ideas were progressive for their time. Parking structures and underground garages were planned to allow car-free microdistricts, and public transport was integrated into the highway. However, pedestrians played only a minor role. Today, this results in fragmented districts, informal parking areas, large streets acting as barriers, and many undefined open spaces.
Our concept follows three goals: reconnecting the fragmented districts, introducing more diverse building typologies and mixed uses, and transforming the undefined open spaces. We strengthen the existing spines to connect Kuristiku and prioritize pedestrians and cyclists. New mobility hubs organize parking and prepare for a future tram connection.
Along the central spine, we create a sequence of public plazas with new community functions, such as a library, senior center, and market hall. The unbuilt highway corridor becomes a continuous public park that connects Kuristiku with the surrounding districts.
In this way, the project completes the unfinished vision of Kuristiku and creates a more human-scaled urban environment.
SO-CO
Grâce-Raphaëlle Lallier, Polina Chernenko, Ziwen Yao
The primary goal of Kuristiku is to create areas that foster social interaction within the neighborhood. To achieve this, the project proposes two types of interventions defined as “hubs,” which strategically utilize existing ground-floor spaces and open green areas. Based on a previous analysis that considered how residents use the neighborhood according to age and existing structures, five Macro Hubs have been established to act as spatial links between residents. Each hub concentrates activities around a specific theme, giving each area a distinct identity. The Garden Hub focuses on collective gardening and provides indoor and outdoor structures for planting. Nearby shops and markets supply equipment and education, making the site accessible to everyone, while the inclusion of senior and mixed housing encourages gentle social interactions among elderly residents. The Culture Hub brings generations together through a theater (including outdoor space), a park, and a cultural center, engaging children, seniors, and neighborhood associations. The Leisure Hubserves as an active hotspot for offices and dining, offering a large venue for special events such as Christmas markets or festivals, while also hosting new office buildings, sports facilities, and restaurants that remain active day and night. The Play Hub focuses on children’s sense of discovery, using ground-floor spaces for social activities and workshops, and featuring a large new playground alongside sports infrastructure such as a gymnasium and athletic fields. The Transport Hub acts as a central node, facilitating movement and connectivity across the district. These hubs are linked by two main pedestrian axes with dedicated bike lanes, which define the zones and make traveling between hubs easy. The central park serves as the heart of the project, connecting the two axes and linking the various gathering spots. At a smaller, more intimate scale, Micro Hubs are located within the courtyards of housing blocks and offer smaller versions of the macro activities, such as collective gardens, residential coffee shops, and local playgrounds. These aim to strengthen social bonds between residents of the same block, which in turn benefits the neighborhood as a whole. The next step of the project is to organize neighborhood assemblies to better understand residents’ expectations and communicate the project’s benefits. Collaboration with inhabitants is essential, particularly as the project provides areas specifically designed to promote social gathering.
Kuristiku; or, life in the Woods?
Felix Thomas Galm, Lucas Alexander Zirn
The project’s goals are Biodiversity, Identity, and Socio-ecological Responsibility. Regarding Biodiversity, the focus is on connecting the surrounding natural green zones, through which new habitats for animals and plants are being developed, and ecological resilience can be increased. Regarding Identity, the aim is to activate historical conditions and combine them with new ideas to foster Estonian identity linked to the forest, while also creating a new dynamic environment. Lastly, Socio-ecological Responsibility helps to navigate between the other goals by educating about socio-ecological systems and thereby enhancing symbiotic effects.
The combination of these goals forms the conceptual approach of the project, which revolves around the idea of Kuristiku as a test location for ecological and urban resilience. The transformation of the old Lasnamäe Airfield into a living biome helps create a dynamic environment and links natural green spaces within the greater context. Community gardens embed environmental care and social cooperation into daily life, while also raising awareness of natural processes.
Further steps in development could include the founding of a Faculty of Forestry Sciences within Kuristiku to act as a mediator between people and nature, the continuation of the Pollinator Highway as an educational path, and the development of new structures to implement more diverse functions into the urban context.
Within a newly created mixed-use center, functions range from small kiosks and shops to offices, a library, or a cinema, while a complex of warehouse- and greenhouse-like structures is intended for appropriation by the local community. The Dynamic Forest System increases biodiversity, links natural green spaces, and provides benefits for the local climate, such as breaking up wind corridors, reducing the heat island effect, creating natural shade, reducing noise, and improving air quality. Green and open spaces provide areas for joint activities and recreational uses, such as mini-golf or saunas on the remains of the former runways.
To return to the idea of Kuristiku as a test location for ecological resilience, two scenarios illustrate potential future development. The maintenance scenario assumes that the community overcomes structural hurdles, maintains the buildings, and keeps the Dynamic Forest System running. The overgrowth scenario assumes that, mainly due to lack of investment, nature takes over and the community abandons the former airfield area. Both scenarios are resilient, and life in the woods continues, albeit in different ways.
To initiate the project, the concept will be presented to residents and neighborhood groups with support from Lasna!dee. Tree-planting and courtyard gardens will be organized, local flora and fauna documented in the atlas, and pop-up events will introduce residents to socio-ecological ideas.
Appropriating the Framework – Resilience through Self-Appropriation
Paula Mohrbacher, Hannah Weber
The framework of a dormitory district is what keeps Kuristiku stuck in time. This includes the built framework, meaning that the typologies of the panel blocks as well as the public facilities are introverted and leave little space for encounters. It also includes the car-centered public spaces and the social and cultural framework, which lacks communal uses such as a library, leisure facilities, or a youth center.
There is potential for bottom-up change, as historical and recent examples show. In the 1980s, Estonians fought for their independence from the Soviet Union. After its collapse, artists reclaimed industrial complexes and turned them into vibrant communal spaces. Since the 2000s, neighborhood initiatives and over 50 community gardens have been founded in Tallinn, including Lasnaidee and some community gardens in Lasnamäe—but none in Kuristiku.
The proposal aims to use the synergy of bottom-up and top-down interventions to diversify public and private spaces. This diversification, combined with the implementation of gentle mobility, helps to create places for encounter and a human scale. We aim to transform the existing typologies, valuing what inhabitants appreciate about their district, while also allowing the implementation of bottom-up interventions. The self-appropriation of the neighborhood brings residents together and creates a sense of self-efficacy and belonging.
A resident-based transformation is resilient, as it considers users’ needs and is adaptable to change. Our proposal envisions a gradual transformation that starts with residents discovering the potential of their district and appropriating the existing typologies. Once new uses are introduced, these are further developed through spatial transformation, eventually leading to social transformation.
To reach these goals, we designed top-down interventions and divided the housing areas into patches. Top-down interventions, such as the development of bike and pedestrian lanes, a community and youth center, and a green axis in the center of Kuristiku, build the foundation for further development by bringing people together. The patches vary in size, depending on the building typology, the courtyard, and the location within Kuristiku. Each patch develops in a bottom-up way and independently.
We designed a set of tools in different categories for the transformation of the patches. The first category is landmarks, which help to create addresses. These can be defined by a use, such as a sauna, or by a natural element, such as a pond. The second category is architectural tools, which can include interventions at the gable end of a building, the rooftop, the façade, or at ground-floor level. The third category comprises landscape-scale interventions, such as slow streets or a frame of trees surrounding a patch. These tools can create diverse spaces and establish a hierarchy of private and public zones.
KuristiCo-Lab: Resilience from Within
Noah Daum, Dominik Vormbruck
KuristiCo-Lab: Resilience from Within is a gradual transformation strategy for the subdistrict of Kuristiku in Tallinn, located in the large post-war housing district of Lasnamäe. Built as a Soviet-era prefabricated housing estate, the area today is characterized by monotonous slab typologies, oversized and undefined open spaces, strong car dependency, and a lack of cultural and communal infrastructure. At the same time, Kuristiku has a strong residential identity and a large, long-term population. The project therefore does not propose a radical redesign, but rather a framework that enables transformation from within.
The core idea is to introduce a rule-based system that empowers residents to gradually reshape their environment. Instead of a fixed masterplan, the district is divided into four spatial categories: private, semi-public, public, and protected zones. Each zone defines a degree of openness, noise tolerance, and programmatic flexibility. Private zones, mainly located in inner courtyards, allow individual and small-scale adaptations. Semi-public zones along secondary roads encourage communal uses and co-decided programs. Public zones, concentrated in the central green belt and along main streets, accommodate larger cultural, social, and commercial interventions. Protected zones preserve essential green structures, schools, and existing trees in order to maintain identity and ecological stability.
Interventions are organized into three scalable types: S, M, and L. Small (S) interventions transform existing parking spaces into gardens, saunas, or small gathering structures initiated by residents. Medium (M) interventions support communal projects that are either self-built or municipally co-funded. Large (L) interventions are city-built projects selected by residents from a predefined catalogue and located in public zones. Complementary building strategies—such as slab add-ons, roof extensions, ground-floor activation, and flat conversions—allow for gentle densification and functional diversification under clear approval rules.
A new mobility highway with bus lanes, cycle paths, and pedestrian routes restructures the central green strip as a public backbone, while parking garages at the district edges compensate for lost parking and are designed for future conversion. By starting with visible “domino” projects, the strategy builds trust and momentum. KuristiCo-Lab therefore establishes not a final image, but a resilient framework that combines spatial structure with civic empowerment, allowing the district to evolve collectively and sustainably over time.
Connecting Kuristiku
Hanna Tilenius, Silas Schmidt
Kuristiku is divided by gaps! Spatial, social and economic gaps. And therefore, it is not resilient.
We want to implement resilience by creating continuous spatial quality, social cohesion, and self-sustainability.
To close spatial gaps, we aim to preserve, use, and connect spaces, creating separation through emotions rather than exclusion. Cars in courtyards will be relocated, while the tram line will run along the main street. Spatial diversity will be achieved through zoning. This will enhance emotional and physical comfort by creating semi-private courtyard spaces through buffer zones and socially supervised open areas.
To address the lack of social connection, we aim to build a resilient community network. Encouraging shared responsibilities and activities is essential. Therefore, we will provide indoor and outdoor spaces for people to meet, gather, and share, creating meeting points for all ages. To support year-round use of outdoor areas, pavilions will extend exterior spaces, while the main meeting point will be the community centre.
Each building will have a community room with a terrace. To manage the transformed courtyards, an Association of Inhabitants (IA) will be formed.
Aiming for a self-sufficient district, income from shared property will reduce residents’ costs and support local organizations. The main road will be improved through commercially and socially active ground floors, accessed through add-ons, terraces, stairs, and ramps. This will generate revenue for the FOAs to maintain the buildings.
Transformation will happen gradually. The first steps will be building the bike lane and parking garages to make the courtyards car-free. In the centre, the first sports fields and playgrounds will be built.
The next stage will include the construction of the new tram line. New buildings in Kuristiku will be constructed as compensation for ground-floor uses, where social and commercial functions will be introduced. The community centre will start as an open structure for multifunctional use, and trees for new forest areas will be planted. Lastly, all the new buildings will be completed, the main street will be redesigned, and the community centre will be finished.
The implementation of the concept requires political commitment to social policy and change, as well as residents’ participation and openness to change. The process must be initiated through municipal moderation and investment, creating the first beneficial improvements that convince and empower residents to gradually take over.
