The design processes in architecture and planning are changing rapidly. The first major disruption appeared in mainstream design technologies around 2000 with rapid digitalisation and automation in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The second is coming up now with advanced development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in language modelling and image creation. One can suspect that this will bring forward a forth technological revolution. Several predictions have been made, the most radical being the 2023 study by Ed Felten et al: Occupational Heterogeneity in Exposure to Generative AI. It is divided into two categories: language modelling exposure and image generating exposure. In the first list of 15 professions to be seriously influenced by AI, are post-secondary level teachers with professors of humanities being the first to go. In the second list of image generation the most exposed professions are: Interior designers, architects, art directors, drafters, civil engineers, commercial and industrial designers, film editors, multimedia and animation directors, graphic designers and desktop publishers.
To advance our knowledge on different design languages and establish the base-line to work further with, a speculative experimental workshop was designed. It comprised different design languages for urban planning tasks. The language domains are:
• Current design practice in architectural office with mainstream design software.
• Archaic design language of hand-drawn plans, sketches and other representational images.
• AR and VR led design language of latest digital software.
• AI assisted design language using text prompts and language modelling. All the teams (2-3 persons), except for the AI language domain, are professional architects and planners.
The AI assisted team consists of people advanced in software and computational models, but having no professional knowledge in planning and architecture.
The experimental workshop sets the following goals:
• Compare the professional design languages to the non-professional AI assisted designs, to establish how exposed are the professions of architect and planner to the technological development in the current moment.
• Make predictions on how the different design languages could be used in the close future, on the background of changing technologies.
• Create the awareness in general public of the different possibilities of the design languages, especially archaic and futuristic on the background of mainstream design practices. That will be made in the format of exhibition and digital catalogue.
• Use the workshop presentations for genealogical and counterfactual analysis for advancing the methodology in the concepts of imagosphere and semiosphere.
• Create a set of podcasts and syllabus for the CPD education in different design languages.
• Make a stand-point for the further studies in innovation and composition in architectural design processes.
1Workshop process
The teams consist of 2 - 3 persons. One of the team members records the actions, workflows and other descriptives of the design process.
The briefs will be available to the teams 2 weeks before the workshop. This period is for preparing for the workshop. The actual working time for the design process is two and a half days. Each team works in their own office. The meetings are at the end of the working days and on final presentation. Before the workshop starts the teams come together for the briefing and preparatory lectures/seminar. After the workshop each team will be interviewed of the experience and further proposals.
2Site context: General considerations
The site of the workshop is in Tallinn. It is the railway territories that have been used for storing freight carrages and trains. The territory is currently under consideration for further development. No master plan has yet been initiated. The side product of the workshop will be the preliminary sketches for Estonian Railway, who is the current owner of the property. The site is approximately 385 000 m

3Situation and surroundings

The workshop area (named as Kaubajaam) is situated in the North Tallinn area, at the beginning of the Kopli peninsula. The peninsula is highly prospective area for further development, as the industry is moving out, large territories become available for residential and mixed-use as well as clean industry planning proposals.
In the south-east the planning area borders with Telliskivi development, Baltic Railway station and further the Old Town.
In south-west the planning area borders Sõle area, which is mostly residential. The same is in the north-east - there is the Kalajama mostly residential area. In the north-west the area borders with former industrial areas, that are and planned for the mixed-use purpose.
The existing planning in the Kopli peninsula mostly develops residential areas. The Kopli peninsula, though, has a major transportation problem. Due to the existing railways, Tallinn harbour area and existing, underdeveloped road structure, the whole Kopli peninsula is very unsufficiently connected to the rest of Tallinn. There are only two main arteries: the Põhja alley connection and Sõle street connection. There are also Suurtüki and Telliskivi street connections, but they are very narrow. The general connection to the rest of the city is the major hinderance in developing the peninsula as sea-side residential territories.
To help this situation the workshop brief proposes the following large-scale urban developments:
• Remove the railway and its lines from Kaubajaam area as well as from the rest of the peninsula. The railway thus will mostly work as passenger transportation on the existing lines to Baltic Railway Station.
• Instead of the existing railway line to Kaubajaam dvelop a new one-way street from Telliskivi street to Paldiski Road. The new road will lead the morning traffic away from the peninsula. It can space-wise have up to three lanes and a bicycle path with the pedestrian side-walk. One of the lines can work as entrance lane, if needed, in the evening peak hours.
• Develop further the connecting green corridor from Stroomi/Merimetsa park area to connect the Snelli park through the planning area. It is romantically called in existing planning proposal the "Straight of Insects".
• Develop instead of existing railway lines in Kaubajaam a new street grid to connect Sõle and Kalamaja residential urban fabric.
4Site history: The beginning of railway system
The Crimean War (1853 - 1856) made clear that Tallinn's marine fortification and military port had no future.
• 1864 - the military port of Tallinn was cancelled and large areas of horizontal defence buildings (moats, bastions and other structures) were given into civil use.
• 1869 - on the 16th May the works on Paldiski - St. Petersburg railway started. It was the fourth major railway line in the Russian Empire, after Moscow, Riga and Warsaw lines. Paldiski harbour was still the goal of commercial and military interests of the empire. Tallinn was on station on the line. The Estonian Knighthood, the major land-owner in Estonian and Livonian counties, supported the railway in hope to have better access to St. Petersburg market and Paldiski's ice-free port.
• 1869 - on the 20th November the first locomotive arrived. The horse rail from Tallinn harbour to Balti Railway station and the designs of the railway from Tallinn to the Paldiski junction were ready.
• 1870 - regular traffic started.

• 1871 - Baltic Railway Station was ready. The 1870/71 winter was so cold that both the Tallinn and Paldiski ports were frozen. The need for bigger buffer areas were needed and in 1875 the expropriation of lands were started.

• 1872 - The Admiralty sold a large area of the Tallinn Harbour to the Customs Office and the port was enlargened. By 1876 all the properties of the railway have been established.
The building of railway lines was the cristallisation of several large phenomena: industrial, commercial, military and political entities were at work here. Out of these a new transportation infrastructure was created. Most of these entities were bigger or foreign to the national territory of Estonia. Historically the Tallinn ports, industry and railway formed a symbiotic network and has developed as a united organism. Today most of these components works separately in the central part of Tallinn. The railway had broad gauge of 1520 mm.

5The development of the First Republic
Already in 1892 another railway was opened - it had a more narrow gauge - 750 mm. This railway network developed separately of the Baltic Railway and had other stations at the edges of Tallinn city. The Baltic Railway remained as it was, new stations were added and built. The properties of Kaubajaam and Baltic Railway Station remained the same. Large ship-building and other industrial developments on the Kopli peninsula remained empty, as Estonia did not have means nor need to keep them going. The properties were sold.
6The Soviet occupation period
After the end of WW2 Estonia was occupied and Sovietised. The private property as well as land- ownership was abolished. Instead "socialist property" was introduced in the form of state ownership and cooperative ownership of some land - collective farms. Within the Soviet Union still different hierarchical power-structures were designed. On top of the socialist republics bureaucracy and economic system federal ministerial establishments were created. They belonged to the jurisdiction of Moscow and were mostly either industry with military aims or railway and marine transport. The republics could not really influence these decisions. The railway system and heavy industry thus became the colonisation instruments as during the Tsarist government. The territories of these became closed and expansionist. The narrow gauge railway was demolished. Dark grey is the railway territories and violet the industrial areas connected to it.

7The last decades
During the independence years the wide gauge railway was reconstructed and partly electrified. The passenger connections and drive frequency has considerably grown. After the pandemic and beginning of Russian-Ukraine war the freight traffic diminished. The transit goods started to diminish since 2021. When 2021 the transit was 9.5 M tons, then in 2023 it was just 2.1 M tons. Since 2008 the passenger traffic has gradually grown and will be believed the main market. Estonian Railway has made an investigation on the Kaubajaam and Baltic Railway Station properties. In that investigation it was very difficult to propose how to develop the Kaubajaam site.
This workshop is a speculative trial to see what and how can be developed at the Kaubajaam site. The radical pre-condition is to remove the railway connections from Kopli peninsula and develop the area outside the industrilisation paradigm.
8Planning proposal
The planned territory in the Kaubajaam area is ca 385 000 m2. Existing and reconstructed building stock is on the area of 75 000 m2. These are the edges of the planned site. Potential Green Straight area is ca 60 000 m2. If needed this can be extended.
The new territory to be planned with new usage is about 250 000 m2. The FAR is between 0.6 - 1.4, depending on the urban design and usage.
There should be at least one property for a large scale public building ca 10 000 m2.
9Street grid
There are two tasks for the street grid:
• It should allow seamless connection between Kalamaja and Sõle districts, so that the whole southern part, bordering with the Telliskivi district and Baltic Railway Station, operates as a continuous, mostly residential urban fabric.
• The planning area should create also a more public and vibrant spine that will lead to the Telliskivi district and allow a possibility to connect further north other areas to the planned area.
The possibility for traffic development is the new connection from Telliskivi street to Paldiski Road.

10Structure
The height of the housing in the planning proposal must not exceed 22 m. The urban quarter structure is according to the streets and pedestrian routes. Residential, mixed use and small clean industry functions are allowed.
At least 150 000 m2 bruto space should be planned. The area must be divided to several developing zones. This is to avoid the full territory remaing a building zone for a long time. The first development zone should be along the Telliskivi street. There should be at least 3 zones, but potentially more depending on the proposal.
There are two renovation areas on the Kaubajaam territory, marked with violet.

11Program 02 - 04 May, SUrF Workshop: Pilot 04
Meetings will happen:
Estonian Association of Architects, Väike Traforuum, Kursi tn 3, 10415 Tallinn.
Day 1, May 2 WORKSHOP INTRODUCTION
16:00 Opening of the seminar, President EAA Andro Mänd. Gathering of participants. Introduction to workshop structure and dynamics.
16:20 Dr. Jüri Soolep, Genealogies of text and image. Innovation and imagination
17:20 coffee, snacks and wine
18:00 end of Day1
Day 2, May 3 WORKSHOP LECTURES AND DISCUSSION
09:00 Teams work on proposals
16:00 Dr. Roger Paez, Situation rooms and game-based design
17:00 Adria Carbonell, Latest trends in planning of metropolitan regions
17:45 Discussion
end of Day 2
Day 3, May 4 PLANNING WORKSHOP
09:00 Teams work on proposals
16:00 Presentation of work done.
18:00 Discussion, coffee, snacks and wine
19:00 end of Day 3
May 5,
12:00 administrative meeting in EAA, discussion of further work, interviews
Proposal presentations
We would propose the following presentation materials, being at the same time fully aware, that the different design languages will use different presentation possibilities. Nevertheless, here is a general lay-out of what can be expected:
1. Schemas of developing visions and concepts of the planning task.
2. Description of the design process, preferably with intermediate solutions.
3. Streets, roads, paths etc. mobility network.
4. Schema of building possibilities.
5. Building possibilities in some volumetric form.
6. Description of greenery and landscaping.
Secondly we would ask that the third person will note the daily tasks, routines and steps of the planning process. That will be a separate minutes of the process. There are meetings planned every evening to discuss and answer questions.
The workshop will conclude with interviews with every team, after the editing of digital catalogue.