Anastasia Vasilieva

• A mysterious chapel building on Paljassaare. Historical overview, restoration concept and project.
• Tutor: Triin Talk

There is a small building on the territory of the Paljassaare waste station, often called the Paljassaare chapel. It is known that somewhere in 1955-56 was removed from the list of dwellings in the building. It was declared dangerous and uninhabitable so that no one could get in there anymore. It has been officially empty since then, but it is remembered that it was lived there decades later. However, the origin of the building is initially hidden in secrets. Although little is known about the building, it is marked as a valuable individual object in the general plan of Põhja-Tallinn.

For monuments under protection, the protection of architectural heritage in Estonia has also been extended to environmental areas and, since 2015, also to valuable individual objects, which are being preserved through plans. Valuable individual objects are a relatively new phenomenon in Estonian planning practice and there are no guidelines for dealing with them.

During the design of the project, various 3D technologies were tested to show their capabilities in mapping and designing the condition of a historic building. Photogrammetry was the most effective way to fix the current situation, and the BIM model was used to design the new solution.

The model was created with ArchiCAD 25. The modeling was performed manually using on-site measurements, and the modeling was rendered using the ArchiCAD 25 internal tool and Enscape software. However, the visualizations made with it are not the most aesthetic. For a more beautiful visualization, you can use rendering through a program specifically designed to render 3D drawings, such as Enscape.

The first visualization shows the expected building after the initial renovation work and the installation of a temporary roof.

In the first stage of construction, the roof and walls will be reinforced so that the roof will support. Then there is grouting the walls, replacing broken bricks and plastering. Also the installation of openings, while ventilation should also remain.

A temporary cover solution was proposed in this project. The goal is to renovate the roof as soon as possible to prevent the object from falling apart.

With another I tried to show what the building could look like after a complete restoration of the roof, openings and facades

As with monuments, there are the same challenges for a valuable individual object. For example, in the case of the Paljassaare chapel, the same principles were used as in the case of buildings under state protection: first of all, it is important to stabilize the situation so that the building is not destroyed, and then to restore it more thoroughly.

In this project, the function is left open (the building is visualized empty) to give the owner and occupier the opportunity to start thinking about possible uses. Visualizations show that the building would be very attractive and usable in many possible functions. For example, the exhibition hall of a recycling center or why not a small house or shrine.