EVA
0.The new ENM lands in the Estonian landscape as a silent neoclassical spaceship.
The building is a large silver ring [the internal diameter is 140m] suspended on diamond-like silver bubbles.
Three are the main requirements for the new ENM: the building should suggest in a simple image the depth and the specific tone of Estonian civilization, it should activate the richness of the landscape in which it is located and it has to perform as a contemporay, effective museum.
1.We propose a building able to suggest the complexity and richness of Estonian heritage without exhausting it, without reducing it to a too easy icon.
For this reason the new ENM has a dense figure, both simple and alien. It is not so easy to classify, yet it clearly refers to precise models. It is simple like a Neolithic sanctuary and it is innocent like a Zeppelin. It has the lunar geometry of a Renaissance exercise on perspective and it is gentle as neoclassical pottery. By collapsing in one single figure many different architectural models, the building defines an expanded time horizon, it advocates for the coincidence of past and future that is the hallmark of utopia; by avoiding any pictoresque suggestion through its explicit classicism, the building underlines the monumental character of the simple objects it contains.
Through its wide, regular appearance, the building highlights the urban qualities of a city without density, encircling an enchanted hole in the middle of landscape, it displaces and concentrates urban life in the middle of nature.
2.The new ENM will act as a machine to frame and observe the Estonian landscape. From the enfilade it is possible to experience a 360 degrees view over the region, from the lawn inside the ring, the flat landscape appears through narrow, large openings that underline the horizon line.
The building does not only offer different possibilities to look at the landscape and to look at the city, but its placement in the area highlights the specific qualities of the Estonian landscape, the wideness, the whiteness. In winter, the silver scales of the building reflect the pale light over the snow; in the summer, the polished building disappears in the neat metallic sky.
The building is placed in between the lake, the pond, the manor and the former military airfield. Through its simple geometry and through its relevant scale, the new ENM provides a centre for the whole area, it estblishes a new geography, able to connect in a common field the very different objects abandoned in the Raadi area. The new intervention takes care of all the elements of this landscape with memories, it works as a restoration machinery, able to add value to the delicate ruins of the Raadi manor, as well as to the waste land of the military airfield. The new organization of the area pays attention not to erase any element of this historical landscape: the lake and the pond and the paths and the Baltic manor and the Soviet airfield are carefully located in a constellation directly recognizable from the city. These different objects compose a new part of the city: the beginning of a new eastern half, able to establish a complex equilibrium with the western part of Tartu.
3.As a rational, contemporary museum, the new ENM is clearly divided in three levels: the underground storages, the ground level facilities and the first level exhibition spaces. The three levels are connected through elevators and stairways that occupy the core of the seven pillars sustaining the ring. The span between the pillars is roughly 60m.
The circular enfilade provides a simple and quiet path trough the collections. The visitor moves along the ring, slowly returning to his starting point, where the main entrance and the main exit are located.
The various facilities related to the museum are organized in six pavillions that connect the ring with the ground. Here are located the offices, the auditoria, the main entrance with the lobby, the workshops, the library, the restaurant and the bar. The six pavillions have easy access from the outside and activate the wide open space defined by the ring. During the summer, festivals and concerts take place in this artificial clearing.
The storages are located underground in order to assure even temperature for the objects of the collection. They are directly connected with the exhibition spaces trough elevators. The storages are organized in the easiest way, as simple, big rooms and can be reached from the parking area trough a direct connection.
4.The bearing structure of the silver ring is actually represented by the ring itself, exploiting the inborn resistance of the closed hollow section, that can be described as an elliptic pipe with a very thin wall, coupled with small steel stiffeners, welded on the internal face, to prevent local instabilities of the shell. The closed shape gives great capacity, though with low structural self weight, enabling the system to stand over the long spans between the pillars.
The above mentioned structure can be easily and quickly realised by assembly of slices directly in height, starting from the pillars up to closing the portions of ring at the middle of the spans.
5.The eleveted gallery uses the same technical solution adopted in everyday bridges engineering.
The continuous circular steel pipe is covered with aluminium slabs on the outside and with special canvas on the inside. In between these two coverings are located the isolating materials (acoustic and thermic) to assure the confort in the exhibition halls.
In between the steel pipe and the aluminium covering there are two insulation layers: one flexible foamed polyurethan layer (thickness 200 mm),one finishing and wet seal layer in aluminium pit panels covered with aluminium anodized natural plates (thickness 200 mm).
The preliminar isolating thickness is relevant considering the climatic conditions and the neccesity to restrict the condensation effects on the pipe steel.
Inside the pipe it is necessary to provide high protection levels in case of fire and assure acoustic confort in the exhibition halls: two layers cover the inner surface structure: the first is a protective layer with swelling paints, the second is the acoustic insulation panels made of expanded plastified aluminium.
To cover the structure and the pipes and to define the exposition space it is used a translucent canvas, composed by metallic fibers and plastic materials with an high fire resistance; it also helps to assure acoustic confort.
The floor is made by calcium sulfate and mineral fiber slabs posed on a metallic structure, sealed with siliconic extrusions.
The slabs are finished with a plastic high resistent film thickness (1.2 mm).
