VARES is an international interdisciplinary residency for spatial practice, whose main task is to seek, find and create alternative spatial practices that are not based on market logic, but rather on the desire to create spaces and places that enrich everyday life, empower the local community and town of Valga.
The residency is interested in finding ways to practice slow architecture, critically rethinking the discipline of architecture, learning and resurrecting vernacular and traditional crafts, gathering old and used materials and creating a place for lifelong learning for architects and spatial artists. VARES is a part of the European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024 main programme.
VARES presents an opportunity for spatial creators – whether they are artists, architects, construction masters, biologists, anthropologists, theorists or anything else – to take time out and focus on durability, which is often not possible in everyday practice. By reassessing, collecting, experimenting, building and maintaining, new ways of creating space sustainably can be found.
With delicate and sparing approach to materials and reuse as an indisputable starting point, we also encourage residents to explore various topics of their own interest, vast or small – from reinventing everyday routines, domestic spaces or objects with an imaginative angle to it, to research-based urban explorations or speculative utopianism and societal critique.
