Laureate for the Annual Award of the Estonian Association of Interior Architects 2025
Interior architecture
Tarmo Piirmets (Pink)
Team
Jekaterina Zakilova, Anni Kotov, Roger Laas, Trine Tõniste, Anni Gihm
Architecture
Jaan Kuusemets, Erko Luhaaru (DAGOpen Arhitektuuribüroo)
Enrique Vallecillos Segovia (Planho Consultores)
José Antonio Pavón González, José de la Peña Gómez-Millán (bakpak)
Landscape architecture
KINO maastikuarhitektid
Construction
Rand ja Tuulberg, Ehitustrust
Commissioned by
Viljandi Haigla
Completed
2025
Location
Jakobsoni 2a, Viljandi
Photos
Tõnu Tunnel

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Tervikum is Viljandi County’s new hospital and healthcare centre, encompassing all of the health services provided to county residents: general practitioners and specialists, nurses and midwives, emergency room service and rehabilitative care. Tervikum is the first wholly new hospital building constructed in Estonia since the restoration of independence.

The new healthcare building was planned holistically, with the border between architecture and interior architecture being natural and purposeful. The nature of the interiors stemmed from principles gleaned from the architects’ conceptual design “Life”, which determined the positioning of the building wings and the general tone colour of the interiors. Interior architect Tarmo Piirmets calls the interior project a complex mathematical operation where rooms had to be merged and divided into groups, preserving their comprehensibility and keeping them from competing against each other. Thus, the major functional units were all given their own tone qualities that can be expressed in colours, materials, information graphics or furniture.

The layout of rooms proceeds from the different entrances to the building, leading to the various departments and services. The foyer by the main entrance links the hospital’s outpatient part and administration; the GP centre, rehabilitative care and emergency room are separate. The patient room wing and gynaecological clinic have their own character and rhythm, while the most frequently visited units – the pharmacy, labs and diagnostic – have a uniform, milder style. The visitor will tend to perceive the distribution between the different zones as smooth transitions rather than emphatic contrasts.

Tervikum’s interior architecture eschews specific symbols and excessive spatial narrativism, as it would have run the risk of over-relying on local motifs. The personality of the city of Viljandi is conveyed instead through volumes and scale, avoiding overly large and empty showpiece areas. The interior architects preferred human proportions and detail-rich public areas where plants, seating and warm light have the dominant role. The colour shades shift according to the department, with the choices being inspired by natural tones. The foyer and outpatient department are green, the patient room is done in a warm yellow-orange shade, and the gynaecological clinic is distinguished by soft flesh and skin tones and bluish colours characterize the rehabilitative care ward. Emergency Medicine is designed in a bright colour spectrum, with orange hues consistent with rapid response.

The interiors are bound into a whole by the use of wood, which is found in every department in different applications and intensity. While Tervikum is a fusion of different healthcare services and cross-disciplinary quality, the interiors are integrally tied together. The new complex is a functional and human environment that rejected the stereotype of a hospital as a sterile, bleak place.