Tallinn: Contemporary Housing

From medieval homes and Gothic towers to Brutalist structures of the 1980s, Tallinn’s architecture is a rich blend of eras and styles. Adding to this diverse landscape are contemporary residential districts that stand out for their innovation. Here are seven contemporary housing projects in Tallinn that have gained international recognition.

Jahu Apartment Building

The five-story building, housing 37 apartments with a total area of 840 m², is located in the Kalamaja district, where historic and contemporary architecture meet. The architects preserved the existing trees on the site and designed a small garden for residents, featuring cherry, apple and lilac trees — a nod to the traditional courtyards of Kalamaja. Ground-floor apartments include private fenced terraces and gardens, offering a sense of seclusion.

The building’s silhouette reinterprets Kalamaja’s characteristic proportions in a modern way, with a distinctive mansard-style roof that harmonises with the surrounding homes.

The façade is clad in Siberian larch, while the ground-floor entrance facing the street features perforated metal panels with wheat motifs — an artistic reference to the street’s name, Jahu (“Flour”), and its history as the site of a former flour mill.

Niine Apartment Building

The apartment building on Niine Street, with a footprint of 300 m², occupies only a small portion of its residential district lot. This allowed the architects to include a children’s playground, a small parking area and a terrace in the design.

Like its neighbors, the building echoes the surrounding attic-style roofs, but with a unique twist. From the street, it appears to have a traditional gabled roof, yet its geometry is more intricate. The top floor features soaring ceilings of up to four meters, designed to accommodate future mezzanine additions — an option already embraced by some residents.

White-painted wooden slats on the façade create a rhythmic interplay with the balcony railings. According to the architects, the building was conceived as a “blank canvas” — a minimalist, neutral backdrop for the residents to make their own.

Lootsi Apartment Building

The building became the first fully realized urban development project in Tallinn’s port area. Once a semi-restricted Soviet industrial zone, this district has been transformed into a modern urban environment at the intersection of the port and the historic city center. Architects from HGA aimed to create one of the first residential spaces near the port, offering residents views of the Old Town while contributing to the area’s urban development. 

The Y-shaped design was driven by the triangular shape of the site, helping to avoid a bulky mass. Compact and functional, the apartments are primarily designed for young professionals and couples, in line with the location and target audience. 

The residential complex mainly caters to households without children, featuring mostly one- and two-bedroom apartments.

For the façade, the architects selected materials that emphasize a connection to nature: wood veneer panels, glass with botanical patterns and stained-glass elements depicting scenes of everyday city life.

Koidula Apartment Building 

The building is located near Kadriorg Park, one of Tallinn’s most significant green spaces. This district is rapidly developing into a prestigious residential area. Koidula Street, lined with buildings from different eras, has a diverse and somewhat eclectic architectural character.

Designed by 3+1 Architects, this residential complex combines the renovation of a historic building with a new section, constructed on the site of an old courtyard annex. These two parts are connected by a covered passage, with the central feature of the project being a landscaped inner courtyard. Thanks to the layout, the courtyard remains visible from the street, strengthening its connection to the surrounding urban environment.

In the historic part of the building, the architects completely reimagined the apartment layouts and introduced new vertical connections between floors. The newly built section, positioned along the site’s boundary, faces exclusively onto the courtyard, ensuring privacy for residents.

Functionally, the new wing is divided into three vertical zones. The first, facing the garden, contains staircases and terraces. The second houses the main living spaces — living rooms and bedrooms. The third, oriented towards the street, serves as a technical zone, accommodating kitchens, bathrooms, saunas and utility systems.

Hiiu Apartment Building 

The Hiiu complex, covering a total area of 8,500 m², is situated in the picturesque Nõmme district of Tallinn. Its design was largely shaped by the characteristics of the site and strict urban planning regulations that limit building density. 

The apartment buildings are positioned on the western side, creating a seemingly urban atmosphere, while the private residences are set apart for greater seclusion. An underground car park minimizes visual clutter and allows the buildings to be visually connected on the level of shared public space. A water feature with an integrated art installation sits between the buildings, reinforcing the complex’s harmony with nature. 

The façades are clad in copper, which gradually develops a patina, blending with the surrounding landscape. The architects used copper to create a seamless visual transition between the walls and roof, while also paying homage to local architectural traditions. Narrow copper strips of varying widths were chosen to optimize costs while adding depth and dynamism to the façade, and the windows were carefully positioned to maximize natural light.

The Hiiu Residences project was featured in MAJA (Estonian Architectural Review) in 2014 and was nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award in 2015.

Pähkli Apartment Building

The Mäeäremae residential area is located just ten minutes from central Tallinn. After World War II, barracks known as “Finnish houses” were built here as part of reparations from Finland. Since the 1990s, the area has undergone significant development. Most streets are now lined with villas, while three of the more distant streets feature three-story apartment buildings. 

The residential buildings on Pähkli Street are arranged in a staggered pattern, with each pair of buildings sharing a private inner courtyard with a lawn and an underground parking. The architects incorporated concrete façade elements with expressive traces of formwork, which are covered in a translucent azure paint, lending the structure a sense of lightness. 

The apartments come with spacious terraces, featuring irregularly shaped wooden lattice screens. The combination of concrete and wood creates an intriguing contrast that will become more pronounced over time as both materials darken from exposure to rain and sunlight.

Masti Apartment Building

Pirita is a district in Tallinn built in the spirit of the English garden city ideals: spacious plots with private houses and townhouses, all surrounded by greenery. This prestigious area is traditionally home to middle- and upper-class residents who work in the city centre. This apartment building retains the comfort and privacy typically found in private villas.

The building on Masti Street consists of two cubic, three-story volumes connected by a covered passage on the upper floor. Underneath this passage, architects from JVR Arhitektuuribüroo designed the entrance area, which offers views of the inner courtyard. The façades are clad in dark brick, while the irregularly placed windows in brown frames create a dynamic visual, reminiscent of mid-20th-century Scandinavian modernism.

Special attention has been given to landscaping: vehicles are hidden behind the building and in an underground parking garage, freeing up space in the garden for pedestrians and greenery. The building contains 14 apartments, with layouts ranging from one to five rooms. Some of the larger apartments even span two floors.

All of these projects have earned international recognition, reflecting Tallinn’s dedication to creating residential environments that are thoughtfully integrated into their surroundings while embracing new ideas. They are definitely worthy of attention from architects and developers across the Baltic capitals.