Mainor Ülemiste, the developer of Ülemiste City has declared PLUSS Architects winner of the architectural design competition for a 20,000 m2 office building to go up next to the new terminal building planned by Tallinn Airport.

According to Mainor Ülemiste Development Manager Ursel Velve three Estonian and one Danish architectural bureau were invited to participate in the competition to design an office building at Sepise 7. „This building has special significance for Ülemiste City, for the new terminal of Tallinn Airport will be built next to it and thus Sepise 7 will serve as the place where the airport and Ülemiste City meet,” Velve said.

„Given the location of the building the competition terms of reference included the requirement for designing a spacious and attractive main entrance. We also asked the architects to design areas for co-working and relaxing, for these are inevitable in future office buildings,” Velve noted. She explained that office buildings in the hub were named after Estonian innovators and inventors and therefore the architects had to propose a worthy name for the new building as well. 

The winning work, titled „Alma Tomingas” was deemed as the best by the Ülemiste City developer’s team, employees of the companies operating in the hub, as well as the jury consisting of service designers and architects. They all liked the beautiful architectural solution, people-friendliness, and how the proposed name and the design came together.

Indrek Allmann from PLUSS Architects explained that the Alma Tomingas Building represented a new generation of office buildings. „In addition to everything that is now part and parcel of class A office buildings, we paid special attention to spatial solutions that would enhance the creativity of people working there. Whether it be a large internal atrium with balconies that shifts the border between indoors and outdoors or a so-called interactive wood, whose tropical microclimate makes it a perfect spot to meet colleagues and fight the kaamos,” Allmann said, hoping that every user of the future building would find a favourite place there.

Alma Tomingas, who is to lend her name to the building, was an Estonian pharmacist, Doctor of Pharmacy, Head of the Chair of Pharmacognosy and later Dean of the Medical Faculty at the University of Tartu, the first Estonian woman to become a professor. „Alma Tomingas helped people with her knowledge of pharmaceutics and medicinal herbs, the office building inspired by her work does the same through the designed environment,” Ursel Velve said, considering it a great honour that the first building in Ülemiste City to be named after a woman, will bear the name of the first Estonian female professor.

Mainor Ülemiste plans to start the construction of the building at Sepise 7 at the end of 2020 and complete it in 2022. The building will have one floor below ground and 12 storeys above ground. 

The building was designed by Indrek Allmann and Gunnar Kurusk.