The Architect's story:
Gert Sarv trained at the Estonian Academy of Arts and cut his teeth in the mid-2000s wave of practices that began rereading Tallinn's Soviet-era building stock as a resource, not a problem. After a stint at KOKO Architects and a year in Rotterdam, he set up his own studio in Kalamaja — the old wooden workers' quarter beside the harbour — focused entirely on adaptive reuse: turning forgotten factories, telegraph stations and Khrushchev-era schools into housing, studios and small cultural venues. His work sits inside the wider Tallinn conversation about how a small Baltic capital becomes denser without erasing what made it strange. He still prefers a sketchbook to a render, and most mornings he is somewhere on a bicycle between Telliskivi and the port.
The Architect's day:
The Architect's links:
Architecture in Tallinn
- Estonian Academy of Arts — Architecture
- KOKO Architects
- Salto Architects
- Kavakava Architects
- Museum of Estonian Architecture
- Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB)
- Telliskivi Creative City
- Noblessner Seafront Quarter