Home PARTNER STORIES PARTNER NEWS Tallinn’s Town Hall square to be enriched by a pop-up park

Tallinn’s Town Hall square to be enriched by a pop-up park

Apr 14, 2023

tallinn_estonia — Photo Credit: Visit Tallinn Convention Bureau

A new park for the European Green Capital 2023

Tallinn – the European Green Capital 2023 will create a pop-up park on the Town Hall square for the summer months, which will offer City residents and guests a versatile leisure space. Architect Ann Kristiin Entson and landscape designer Hannes Aava of Tallinn Strategy Center have completed the sketch of the park.

The new park offers versatile pastime options, you can, for example, take time out and find something to read from the bookshelves (by the National Library), sit in hanging chairs and numerous seating areas, watch concerts and performances on the outdoor stage of Town Hall Square or just observe people passing by.

“In the European Green Capital year Tallinn will make various spatial interventions in more than 70 locations in the city, which will make the urban space friendlier and greener. One of them is a temporary park that will come to the heart of the Old Town on the Town Hall square. These interventions will make people look at familiar places from a new point of view and offer new possibilities for activities for both the city’s visitors and the people of Tallinn,” said Vladimir Svet, Deputy Mayor of Tallinn.

“The park forms a perimeter circle, which is easily passable by people passing through the Town Hall square in a hurry, but at the same time creates a private space deep in the greenery. The greenery planted in the containers is multi-faceted and multi-species, including historical species grown in the old town’s monastery gardens, such as lavender and monk’s flower, as well as many other plants that create value for pollinators,” said Hannes Aava, co-author of the park and project manager of „Green Traks“.

Changing the urban space

The pop-up park is created as part of the “Green Tracks” project and is expected to open at the beginning of the summer and will remain in the central square of the old town until the end of the summer. Its plants will be replanted in the autumn in the city centre, and the park inventory can be reused in the future.

In the year of the green capital, Tallinn has made one of its goals to contribute to changes in the urban space. The “Green Tracks” project brings together activities aimed at improving the quality of green areas, introducing new greenery and improving the spatial quality in densely used places, supporting the development of urban green networks, and testing new urban spatial solutions in the form of changes in the spatial organization as well as prototypes.

Based on the Tallinn 2035 and Climate Neutral Tallinn documents, the project aims to improve the living environment of the city, increase natural diversity, create mitigative measures for climate change-related risks and instil sustainable practises by including district governments, local businesses, educational institutions and citizens in their activities.