The new solution created a square that is actually a real square: a central area for pedestrians, with regulated car and bus traffic around it.
AADRESS: Vaksali street 19
TELLER: Tartu City Government
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE: KINO, Tõnis Arjus
BUILDING: TREF, 2017
PREEMIA: Cultural Endowment of Estonia in architecture, landscape architecture winner 2018; Tartu Act of the Year 2017
For years, the square in front of the Tartu railway station was a traffic hub, with only a narrow traffic island for pedestrians. The new design combines several different sets of rules. The strict order is like a reference to the past (trains, order, punctuality); but within and behind the illusion squats a disorderly but quiet lushness, like the actual visual of a train ride: meadows and forest. The role of the railway in the invasion of goods, people and species is reflected in the species planted in the square: the tension between order and disorder is expressed in the contrast between the strict form and flow of the vegetation.
