The Arvo Pärt Center was founded to preserve the heritage of the outstanding composer in his native country, in the Estonian linguistic environment. Its building will be built in the Laulasmaa area, 35 km from Tallinn, on a peninsula overgrown with pine trees, next to the seashore.
The project of the winners, the Spaniards Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, is entitled Tabula. It is a series of interconnected public and private spaces covered with a single roof. The authors decided to preserve all the trees now growing on the site: this is how “playful” courtyards appeared in the building. Their dialogue with the roof, according to the architects, is an interpretation of emptiness and silence as the implicit protagonists of architecture and music.
The chairman of the jury, the composer's son Mikael Pärt, noted that the winners' project is fresh in terms of design and architectural form, in addition, “Tabula creates a harmonious and flexible environment for Arvo Pärt's music. Especially worth highlighting in the project is its spatial composition and carefully thought-out lighting."
The center's program includes the archive of the Arvo Pärt Foundation, a library, workshops, administrative premises, exhibition spaces and a hall for concerts, performances, conferences and film screenings. The new building is due to open in 2018, the year of the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Estonia.
71 bureaus from all over the world submitted applications for the competition. 20 workshops were invited to participate in the 2nd, design stage. Three of them won prizes - except for Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, these are the Americans Allied Works Architecture (2nd place) and the Estonians Kavakava (3rd place).
Three more projects received special awards: these are works by OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen (Belgium), Coop Himmelb (l) au (Austria) and Danes Henning Larsen Architects.
The jury awarded the Slovenian architects Ofis a special prize for original design and bold thinking that pushes the usual boundaries.
The remaining 13 works are also presented to the public, but anonymously. However, the list of their authors is known, among them - Zaha Hadid, Alejandro Saera-Polo, Claudio Silvestrin, Jensen & Skodvin, Johan Celsing Arkitektkontor, Rick Joy and Schneider + Schumacher, as well as the Estonian workshops Stuudio Tallinn, KOKO Arhitektid, Kolm Pluss Ü …
