Demokraatlik Linnahall proposes a new architectural typology, a Parliamentary Park for Estonia, sited within and around the derelict concrete halls of Tallinn’s most prominent Brutalist icon.

As the Republic of Estonia celebrates its centenary year, it faces a challenge in trying to define its national identity. Whilst cultivating its image as a decentralised, ultra-liberal digitalised democracy, it must also carry with it the shadows of its Communist past.

A series of highly tuned spaces frame activity within the Linnahall, acting both in the physical and the digital realms and opening up the possibility of ‘remote occupancy’ of the parliament. By embracing AR and VR within the fabric of the eighties building, more citizens can engage directly with the machinery of the government.

Building on Estonia’s investment in the ‘electronic society’, the new interventions act as a kind of physicalisation of a political belief system, a kind of software capable of building something new and vital within the relics of the past.