Competition: Skoone Active Urban Space

Title: Dancing Trilobites
Date: March, 2026
Location: Tallinn, Estonia
Authors: Hannes Aava (landscape architecture), Maali Romet-Allese (landscape architecture), Margit Argus (Studio Argus, architecture)

About: Tallinn is looking to transform the greenspace around the 17th-century Skoone Bastion into a park for active mobility for children and teenagers, while preserving the spatial qualities of the historical defensive infrastructure. Our competition entry, Dancing Trilobites, proposed to reveal the features long buried under layers of soil added over the last century, while using the extensive earthworks as a reference to the geological history of the site. The playful landscape would feature oversized mounds shaped as fossils of the aquatic species once present here, when the area was part of a vast glacial lake.

The site plan highlights Skoone's nodal position in central Tallinn, proposing several new public areas: a new bridge connecting North Tallinn to the Old Town, and a new public plaza that transforms into an ice rink in winter. Play, sport, and active mobility infrastructure are woven into the landscape — new sport facilities, including changing rooms and showers, form a hillock with seating for watching the stadium below or simply sunbathing. The former Tsarist-era storage building is reimagined as a café with a lush courtyard garden.