Practical Utopias

“Practical Utopias” is a study of everyday life, utopian dreaming, everyday aesthetics and bodily experience. Questioning the still prevalent nuclear-family-based model of life and the accompanying spatial typology, the thesis also challenges normative understanding of bodily existence and movement, which dominates our daily spaces. I believe it is important to imagine as many different hyper-local visions of alternative presents and futures, as possible, while avoiding one-size-fits-all solutions.

The work concludes with a speculative vision of collective living in the center of Tallinn. To accommodate this “utopia” in the center of the city, I’ve been looking for empty “ecosystem niches”. The home-archipelago consists of ascetic totem-like huts scattered in the center of Tallinn, in which various everyday activities take place. The center-point of the archipelago is “The House of Day”, a bigger building situated between soviet garages. It is a mother house where all the other little huts are built, then carried around the city and planted into its cavities like parasites. When the huts finish their life cycle, they will be brought back to the mother house, dismantled, reused or burned in the large furnace for warmth.