KOKO arhitektid

21/09/2026

A cathedral of industry, reborn for the crowd.

Built in 1875, the Krulli factory hall in Tallinn is being reshaped into a 2,000-square-metre event space that keeps its industrial soul intact. Exposed brick, steel beams, and a soaring, cathedral-like volume set the tone — raw, edgy, and unmistakably historic, now made ready for a very different kind of gathering.

KOKO's approach is a sensitive renovation: the historical layers on the building's walls are preserved rather than erased, windows are replaced, and a new, quiet ventilation system is built in to create a genuinely good acoustic space.

What makes the hall remarkable is its range: acoustic curtains and an electric darkening skylight let the same room shift from a conference for over 600 people to an intimate dinner for 220, a fashion show, or a live performance. Separate circulation for guests and staff, a technical balcony, and a basement foyer keep the machinery of big events invisible.

Photos: Tõnu Tunnel

17/09/2026

https://maaleht.delfi.ee/artikkel/120610482/grossi-viljandi-spaa-tundeline-teekond-eesti-luhimast-anekdoodist-sajandi-ehituseni

Kaks hiiglaslikku ufot oleks justkui maandunud Viljandi järve äärde. Tegelikult ehitatakse seal 40 miljoni eurost spaad ja konverentsikeskust, mis peaks muutma suisa linna mainet. Maaleht piilus sisse.

16/09/2026

Otsime oma kontorisse naabreid.

Meil on Fahle Maja teisel korrusel rohkem ruumi, kui ise ära kasutame. Anname osa välja — mitte eraldi üüripinnana koridori otsas, vaid ruumidena meie enda töötava kontori sees.

Ootame naabreid loomevaldkondadest: arhitektuur ja ruumiloome, disain, kunst, foto ja film, kirjastamine ja digilahendused. Samuti inseneribüroosid ja konsultante, kes arhitektidega niikuinii koos töötavad.

VABAD PINNAD

Lounge 72,4 m² — kuni 12 töökohta
Klaasseinaga tsoon 135,2 m² — kolm kabinetti ja avatud tööala, 15–20 inimesele
Kabinetid 8,6 / 8,8 / 16,5 / 16,8 m²
Ükshaaval või koos.

KAASA TULEB
Neli koosolekuruumi, köök, galerii, 174 m² rohelusega väliterrass ja välikuppel — koht, kuhu minna mõtlema ja joonistama, kui laua taga enam ei tule. Internet on megakiire.

Tartu mnt 84a, Tallinn.
Maigi Koplimets · [email protected] · 660 4060

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We're looking for neighbours. Part of our floor at Fahle Maja is available — not a separate unit down the corridor, but rooms inside our own working office.

We're looking for neighbours from architecture and spatial design, design, art, photography and film, publishing and digital — as well as engineering offices and consultants.

A 72.4 m² lounge for up to 12 desks. A 135.2 m² glass-partitioned zone with three private offices and an open work area, for a team of 15–20. Four single offices, 8.6 to 16.8 m². One or several.

Shared: four meeting rooms, a kitchen, a gallery, a 174 m² planted terrace, and an outdoor dome to think and draw in. Very fast internet.

Tartu mnt 84a, Tallinn · [email protected] · 660 4060

15/09/2026

Tallinn's most central building.

At Viru väljak — Tallinn's central roundabout, the point from which distances to every other Estonian town are measured — the preserved facades of the former Alexander Gymnasium (1872–1917) still stand, weathered limestone holding its ground against the city's busiest crossing. Behind them, a new glass volume rises with rounded corners, stepping back from the street as it climbs, its irregular rhythm of windows offering office space above and retail at street level.

Between old wall and new glass, a covered pedestrian route runs the length of the building — sheltered from wind and traffic, a quiet seam stitching past into present. By night, the building glows, carried by the same coloured lighting system built into its glass facade — a beacon at the energetic centre of the city. Below it, on the roundabout, life circles the building day and night.

Completed in 2009, Metro Plaza holds 12,000 m² of offices, retail and two underground parking levels for 78 cars — a historic shell carrying a fully modern building within it.

Architects: Kotov, Stöör, Kõresaar. Interior architects: Lindvere, Paling, Murula.

Photos: Tõnu Tunnel

12/09/2026

Light, where there was almost none.

Patarei — a museum dedicated to the victims of communism, set within the former sea fortress — began as a coastal defence in 1830, later became a barracks, and for much of the twentieth century served as a prison, including the years it operated as a Soviet detention facility. That history is not something the design sets aside; it is the ground it stands on.

The architectural approach favours restraint over reinvention. Daylight is guided through the existing limestone walls and narrow corridors, echoing how, for many held here, a thin ray of light was one of the only signs of an outside world. Some spaces, including the ex*****on chamber and solitary cells, are left deliberately untouched rather than restored.

Interior architecture and exhibition design by Liis Lindvere.

Now under construction on Tallinn Bay, the museum is set to open in 2027.

Project status: under construction.

Photos: Tõnu Tunnel

09/09/2026

Three UFOs, keeping watch over Rotermann Quarter.

Slender towers, reminiscent of industrial cooling towers, rise from a 19th-century limestone building that once served Tallinn's harbor industries. Where the original structure had slipped on unstable ground and needed reinforcement, the architects drove 18-meter piles deep into the earth and let staircases and lift shafts work as solid diaphragm walls — turning a structural fix into an architectural statement. The towers now hold office space.

By day, the triangular tower windows echo the geometry of cooling towers against the historic streetscape. By night, the towers glow red, taking on an otherworldly presence — like signals from a distant world, their window pairs resembling the eyes of extraterrestrial beings watching over Rotermann Quarter.

Today the 2,700 m² building holds a restaurant and candy shop at ground level, with offices for music, advertising, and law firms above — old limestone walls carrying a distinctly futuristic silhouette into the quarter's daily life.

The concept proved distinctive enough to be named a finalist for the Mies van der Rohe Award — the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture — in 2009.

Architects: Andrus Kõresaar, Raivo Kotov

Photos: Tõnu Tunnel

07/09/2026

Hiiu elevator / drone view

Seen from above, the Hiiu grain elevator rises like a solitary monument from a sea of autumn pine forest. Built in 1956, its raw concrete tower and long storage block dwarf everything around it — rooftop cranes, ventilation shafts, and a slender antenna mast add to its weathered, industrial silhouette.

The building's scale is striking: nothing nearby comes close to its height, and the surrounding low sheds, yards, and scattered vehicles only emphasize how far it towers above its own site. Beyond the fence line, dense forest stretches to the horizon in every direction, swallowing the district's rooftops and leaving the elevator as the one unmistakable landmark for Hiiu — visible long before anything else in the area comes into view.

Empty and idle today, the tower awaits its next chapter through KOKO Architects' renovation project.

Photos: Ragnar Jaaniste

06/09/2026

Tbilisi's closed landmark, opened up to everyone.

Rising 274.5 meters above Tbilisi's Mtatsminda plateau, this broadcasting tower has shaped the city's skyline since 1972. Visible from nearly every corner of the Old Town, the structure has long stood more as infrastructure than as a place people could enter — a landmark the whole city could see, but almost no one could visit.

The renovation concept turns that around. To work out how a closed broadcasting tower becomes public space, KOKO researched the question together with the Shimanovsky Institute in Kyiv. The resulting concept is part of the Tbilisi mayor's action plan for the city.

A public bar and restaurant occupy the triangular volume at +70 meters, while a viewing platform and exhibition space crown the tower near +150 meters, reached by dedicated visitor lifts. A 960-square-meter entrance building grounds the experience below, with a spa-hotel extension proposed on the adjacent slope.

3D visuals

03/09/2026

A limestone boiler house, crowned in glass

Built in 1926 as a cellulose factory's boiler house, the Fahle building stood abandoned after the plant closed in 1993 — one more relic of a collapsed industrial order on the edge of Tallinn. Rather than erase that history, the transformation kept it: heavy limestone walls, factory proportions, the raw texture of a century-old shell.

Onto this base rose something deliberately different — a lighter, glazed volume set atop the old structure, its transparency a quiet contrast to the stone below. The new apartments read this tension directly, industrial character intact behind expansive glass, with sweeping views over the city as reward for the climb upward. Offices and a ground-floor restaurant now animate what was once a closed industrial site, turning it into a genuine piece of urban life.

Completed in 2007, Fahle House was honored with the Cultural Endowment of Estonia's Annual Architecture Prize and shortlisted for the London Design Museum's Design of the Year.

Architects: Raivo Kotov, Andrus Kõresaar
Graphics: Martin Lazarev
Construction: Koger & Partnerid, manager: Toomas Kaares
Special thanks for the unforgettable times and adventure: Andres Koger
Photos: Tõnu Tunnel, Kaido Haagen

31/08/2026

A gallery street, stitched through the city centre.

At the heart of Tallinn, four central plots once closed off by the old Designers' House and Meloni department store are becoming a new urban quarter. The core move is simple and direct: a glass-roofed gallery street cut straight through the block, physically stitching Rävala and Estonia boulevards back together.

Limestone, dark granite, and brass anchor the architecture in permanence rather than passing trend, lining a pedestrian spine of retail and dining that opens onto public squares overlooking Tammsaare Park. Spanning over 85,000 m², the project reconnects two halves of central Tallinn through one continuous public route.

In cooperation with N Studio and Benoy London