The opening of the Arvo Pärt Center building is timed to coincide with the centenary of the Republic of Estonia, which is celebrated this year. The construction was financed by the state, while the initiators of the establishment of the institution were the composer himself and his family. Its purpose is a space for the preservation and research of Pärt's creative heritage in Estonia, in his native language environment. The center - archive - was founded in 2010 in the former private house "Alina" (the name is associated with the innovative piano piece "For Alina" in 1976), 35 km from Tallinn, in the resort area of Laulasmaa; the composer himself lives in the same village. Since in this modest villa it was impossible to provide researchers with access to materials, to organize educational programs and concerts, in 2014 an international competition was held for the design of a new building - in the same Laulasmaa.
The winners were Spanish architects Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobehano. The authors based their project on the role of space and time for architecture and music: in addition to the obvious, the building also has a temporal dimension, and the sound is determined by the space where it is produced.
A low-rise building without right angles is located in the middle of a dense pine forest on a peninsula that stands out in the Baltic. The motif of the pentagon is repeated in the project in different forms like the image of a mirror in a mirror, recalling
key composition of Pärt. The building has no main and secondary facades, a hierarchy of space. Only the function of this or that part determines the permeability of its walls, including due to the density of the arrangement of the columns: their arrangement reminds of the rhythms of some of the composer's works.
The structure is cut through by a series of pentagonal courtyards. One of them houses a massive chapel - an abstract image of an Orthodox church. Near the center is a light tower, from the top of which you can see the sea. These two accents, similar to musical ones, according to the architects, reflect the main impulses of construction - to merge with the ground-ground and achieve zero gravity.
The building houses the composer's archive of all related materials, a library (based on the books of Arvo and Nora Pärt, mainly theological works supplemented by notes of the composer's works, musicological literature, audio and video recordings), exhibition and educational premises, a concert hall for 140 people, cafe and staff offices.
