The winning team will draw up plans for a unified, pedestrian-friendly streetscape along a roughly 170m stretch of Narva Street – creating a new coherent image linking together the university’s fragmented buildings and strengthening its visibility in the city.
The project will reorganise pavements, landscaping, lighting and other small architectural elements, and will create a new outdoor exhibition area that could host the university’s first curated display.
Entries are expected to propose compact, deliverable interventions that increase greenery, improve access to the university’ s inner courtyard and allow for phased implementation. Proposals must also accommodate future plans for a new Tallinn-wide cycling network and possible changes to the wider street layout.
According to the brief: ‘The architecture competition for Tallinn University identity and Narva Street in front of the University is an open public procurement design competition for a sketch project for an outdoor space.
‘Ideally, the urban space will be built together with the Tallinn City bike path project, but the part of the roadway between Tallinn University and the sidewalk must be feasible even if the city project is not built or is built later.’
Overlooking the Gulf of Finland, Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia and home to around one-third of the country’s population. The city’s old town became a UNESCO world heritage site in 1997 and today the wider settlement is home to many start-up companies specialising in IT and finance.
The contest comes three years after the Port of Tallinn announced an open competition for a new passenger ferry terminal and almost nine years after London’s Zaha Hadid Architects won an international competition to re-masterplan Tallinn’s historic Old City Harbour.
In October, Stuudio TÄNA and Mark Aleksander Fischer were announced as the curatorial team for the 2026 edition of the Tallinn Architecture Biennale.
Organised by Tallinn University and Estonian Association of Architects – the latest competition conceptual designs for the renewal of a key public space outside the university along with infographic and accessibility upgrades to the organisation’s main entrances.
Judges will include Kristi Vinter-Nemvalts, chancellor of Tallinn University; the traffic expert Raul Vibo; Hanna Veske, a representative of KEKO; Siiri Vallner from the Estonian Association of Architects; and Kerttu Kõll from the Estonian Association of Landscape Architects.
The overall winner will receive a €14,000 top prize while a second prize of €12,000 and third prize of €8,000 will also be awarded along with two additional prizes each worth €6,000.