Elisabeth Terrisse de Botton and Matthieu Brasebin winners at TAB 2024

With their project entitled "No Time to Waste", the team comprising architects Elisabeth Terrisse de Botton (Spain) and Matthieu Brasebin (France) is the winner of the "For this Situation" competition launched by the Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB 2024), to be held in the Estonian capital from 9 October to 1 December 2024. The challenge of this international competition was to devise a welcoming place that provided "the joy of killing time in a community space".

The competition challenged participants to develop creative designs for a permanent outdoor installation at Tallinn’s busiest transportation hub – the Balti Jaam. The Pavilion will be located on the edge of the largely intact Tallinn Bastion Belt encircling Tallinn’s UNESCO-protected medieval Old Town The project was to be inspired by the concept of immobility – killing time and needing shelter in a place of transit.

The winning project, "No Time to Waste" by Elisabeth Terrisse de Botton (ES) and Matthieu Brasebin (FR), proposes an engagement with the neighbouring square at the station and offers alternative relaxation spaces for the city's residents.

"The 'No Time to Waste' project focuses on the act of killing time and providing shelter by creating a structure that uses re-purposed, reused resources, but also makes the time spent waiting worthwhile. The pavilion features a series of walls that define a sequence of covered, accessible rooms that are open to future development," explain Elisabeth Terrisse de Botton and Matthieu Brasebin.

Inspired by the gabion wall construction system, lightweight steel cages filled with leftover stone and rubble will serve as external foundations for the pavilion. Moreover, variations in the density of the filling will allow a degree of transparency at certain points of the wall. The structure of the roof is composed of a grid system made of primary beams and secondary battens.

The winning proposal from the Installation Programme competition will serve as a waiting area for passengers on local bus routes.

Workshops focusing on building and activating the pavilion will involve architecture and design students from the Estonian Academy of Arts.