The curatorial exhibition of the Estonian Association of Architects 2018 proposed one possible vision about how architecture should react to the unnerving news about the overheating of our planet. Why is the carbon footprint of an Estonian altogether three times larger than that of a Latvian or a Swede and why does it rank among top ten in the world? What is done in Estonia at the moment to decrease the carbon footprint and is it sufficient? What else should we do or what should we do instead to make it actually smaller? These are just some of the questions that the exhibition raised and attempted to answer to the best of its abilities.

Throughout the exhibition, the main unit of measurement was 1 tonne of CO2_e (that is CO₂ equivalents). If a barrel of oil would contain 357 litres of gasoline, its burning would release 1 tonne of CO2_e into the atmosphere. In the exhibition, such a barrel was represented by an oil barrel of 200 litres (the scale was thus 1:1.8). The number of oil barrels (80) represented the average CO2_e emissions of a 120 m² private building over its life span.

The exhibition was awarded with the Estonian Cultural Endowment’s annual prize in the exhibition category (the honour was shared with Ingrid Ruudi’s exhibition “The Room of One’s Own: The Feminist’s Questions to Architecture”). The exhibition was also shortlisted for the Clear Message Awards.

Curators: Eik Hermann, Mihkel Tüür, Rene Valner.
Partners: Ott Kadarik, Raul Kalvo, Ralf Lõoke, Erkki Seinre.
Graphic design: Uku-Kristjan Küttis, Jaan Sarapuu (AKU).
Special thanks to: Endrik Arumägi, Paul Klõšeiko, Raimo Simson, Martin Thalfeldt (Taltech), Kalle Kuusk (Kredex), Kiel Moe, Ravi Srinivasan, Margus Tali, Siim Tali, Ingrid Kormašov.

The exhibition was supported by the Estonian Cultural Foundation, AS Bauroc, AS Floorin. In preparation the exhibtion, we were able to use OneClickLCA software. We also thank Pärnu City Government, Hiiu Local Government, Karin Bachmann, Angeelika Pärn, Kaire Nõmm and Leles Luhse.