Tiia Vahula

Tiia Vahula is an architect working between the very large and the very small: office towers, airport terminals and cultural buildings at UNStudio, and 3D‑printed clay walls, tiles and wearable objects made by hand and by robot.

She joined UNStudio in Amsterdam in 2014, the year she graduated, and is now a Senior Associate and Senior Architect. Her projects there span Seoul, Singapore, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Vienna, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. Most of them are about the skin of a building: what it lets in, what it shows, how it breathes.

Between 2015 and 2017 she co‑founded Studio UnSeen in Tallinn with Ljudmilla Georgijeva and Madis Kaasik, building clay 3D printers and exhibiting the results at the Tallinn Architecture Biennale, including SEEM[N]EST, a porous ceramic wall that filters rainwater and grows moss.

She is a registered architect in the Netherlands, a WELL Accredited Professional and a certified building life‑cycle assessment specialist. She speaks on façades, wellbeing and fabrication, and sits on design juries.

Based

Amsterdam, Netherlands

From

Estonia

Practice

UNStudio, Senior Associate / Senior Architect, since 2014

Registration

Architectenregister, Netherlands

Credentials

WELL AP (IWBI, 2024) · Construction LCA Specialist (One Click LCA, 2023)

Education

MSc Architecture with honours, Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn, 2014 · TU Wien, studio of Prof. Will Alsop

Languages

Estonian, English, German

Talks, juries, exhibitions

• 2024Speaker, AIXD24 — AI & Experience Design conference, Trippenhuis / KNAW, Amsterdam
• 2022Jury, Active House Awards, Active House Symposium, De Doelen, Rotterdam
• 2017Exhibitor, Tallinn Architecture Biennale, curatorial exhibition Anthropocene Island
• 2015Exhibitor, Tallinn Architecture Biennale, TAB‑LAB research and development exhibition

Earlier

• 2013Architect, Architekturbüro Reinberg, Vienna — sustainable design
• 20133D projection mapping, EASA European Architecture Students Assembly, Žužemberk, Slovenia
• 2011–12Design Architect, Projekt363, Tallinn