VARES invites architects, ecologists, artists, engineers, and other spatial practitioners to explore the evolving boundary between water and land during a one-month residency in Valga, Estonia. The residency focuses on integrating water into urban life and embracing its unpredictability through architectural interventions, installations, ecosystem enhancements, research, performances, and other creative approaches.

Residency Period: May 27 – June 30, 2025

Application Deadline: March 30, 2025

Support: Stipend, travel, and production budget available

Results Announced: April 7, 2025

The program is open to professionals, students, and thinkers working across various disciplines with a sustainable and sensitive approach to materials and the environment. The residency will culminate in a public weekend (June 27–30) featuring lectures, workshops, and exhibitions.

Location & Practicalities

Residency includes accommodation and workshop facilities in Valga, Estonia. Accessible from Tallinn (3.5h) and Riga (2.5h). Open to individuals and groups.

Valga is a town shaped by various types of wetlands, squelching, sinking, unstable and liquid surfaces, and a variety of water body typologies—wetlands, rivers, streams, ditches, bogs, springs, reservoirs, and fountains.

Water is an unstable element that keeps landscapes in constant change. It falls from the sky, flows from stream to river, presses the air out of the earth, makes the ground beneath us soggy, or evaporates intthe air. The springtime streams, swollen with water, recede by midsummer into network of veins buried under the grass.

Banks and wetlands are biodiverse ecosystems where old frogs and toads meet nymphs, fairies, wanderers, adventurous children, and teenagers sneaking their first smoke. These places don’t need to be tamed, drained, or funneled into pipes as a nuisance, but rather transformed into an enriching part of everyday urban life.

How can we bring people closer to water? How can we transform the soft, squelching land in urban spaces into something that is not a burden, but a charm? How can we reimagine the boundary between land and water, and embrace the unpredictability of both?

We invite everyone to explore this theme in their own way. Over the course of the one-month residency, we encourage residents to work on architectural or landscape interventions, installations, ecosystem enhancements, site-specific art, research, performances, or playful explorations of water’s journey from sky to earth.

Who are we looking for?

The call is open to all whose work and mindset align with the philosophy of the residency and the “Liquid Landscapes” theme. A sensitive and sustainable approach to materials and the environment forms the foundation, from which we encourage residents to work on projects driven by personal interest and ardor, across various media and scales: from reinventing daily routines, to the imaginative rethinking of everyday spaces and objects, urban interventions, speculative utopias and social critique – from art to scientific research. We welcome professionals and students, writers and thinkers, practitioners and theorists.

Closing event

The one-month residency will culminate in a public weekend from June 27 to June 30, featuring lectures, seminars, short workshops, walks, and more. We expect residents to publicly share their summary or interpretation of the residency period in their preferred format (lecture, publication, exhibition, installation, workshop, performance, open studio etc.).

About VARES And Valga

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.

“Liquid Landscapes” residency is part of a broader, ongoing initiative by VARES dedicated to the relationship between water and urban space. It is, among other things, an effort to contribute to the shaping of Valga’s identity by influencing and empowering the town’s existing landscape and its perception. This initiative began last year when we organised a vision competition for the opening of the Pipraoja (Pepper stream), which is channeled through a pipe beneath Valga’s city center.

Practicalities

The residency period is May 27 to June 30, 2025, with a public closing event and sharing taking place on the last weekend of June.

The open call is available for both individuals and groups to apply.

The residency offers accommodation and basic workshop options within the residency building, with more specific workshop conditions available in Valga that will be organised according to the residents’ needs.

The VARES residency is situated approximately 3.5 hours from Tallinn by train and 2.5 hours from Riga. The building is 400 metres from the Latvian border and 5 minutes by foot from the Valga town centre. The residency offers a couple of bikes as means of transport around the town and additional engine assistance can be arranged (vans, cars etc.).

How to apply?

If you wish to participate in the residency, please send the following

→ Your CV (and portfolio if available, pdf, max 25 MB)

→ Statement of interest in your preferred format: motivation letter and/or a rough action plan, visual material or project description for the residency period, and connection to the proposed theme (max 25 MB)

The deadline for applications is March 30, 2025. Please send your application to the email address info@vares.space, with the subject line “Liquid Landscapes your name.”

The selection will be made by VARES curators (Ulla Alla, Merilin Kaup, Mari Möldre, Margus Tammik) and the results will be published on our website by April 7, 2025.