symposiums built
2Welcome Stranger! in 2016 and Naked SPACE in 2017, each with a different structure to solve.
Cultural institution · Symposium platform · 2016-2017
SISU
SISU is the interior architecture symposium of the Estonian Association of Interior Architects. HAAM built two of its editions: Welcome Stranger! in Tallinn in 2016, and Naked SPACE across Lucerne and Tallinn in 2017. Years later, when the hosting was long gone, HAAM recovered them.
Two editionsEstonian Association of Interior Architects
2016Welcome Stranger!
EestiEnglish
2017Naked SPACE
EestiEnglishDeutsch
Built 2016 · 2017Recovered 2026
speakers hosted
24Fifteen in Tallinn in 2016, nine across Lucerne and Tallinn in 2017, each with a page in every language.
languages in parallel
3Estonian and English from 2016, German added in 2017, each maintained as its own edition.
pageviews in the 2016 season
11,284Roughly a quarter of everything read across the association's website that spring and summer.
The brief
Two events, two different problems.
SISU is organised by the Estonian Association of Interior Architects together with the interior architecture department of the Estonian Academy of Arts. Each edition takes a theme and builds a programme of international speakers, films, and moderated discussion around it.
In 2016 the theme was nomadism, and the site's problem was presence. Welcome Stranger! ran for three days in the Hobuveski in Tallinn, and the brief was to make the website feel like something was happening: a live blog through the event, a schedule that knew what time it was, and a card on the association's own homepage naming whoever was currently on stage.
In 2017 the theme was what happens to a building when its original purpose runs out, and the site's problem was structure. Naked SPACE ran in two countries simultaneously, in three languages, with some sessions shared between the cities and some belonging to only one. A visitor should never have to work out which half of the programme applies to them.
The editions
Each year rebuilt around what that year had to do.
The visual identity carried across, but the structure underneath was designed for the specific shape of each symposium.
Welcome Stranger!
The third SISU took nomadism as its subject: movement that is sometimes chosen and sometimes forced, and what it does to the idea of a place and a home.
- A live blog that ran through all three days, 33 posts in the end
- Most of those posts tied to the speaker who was on stage
- Registration and newsletter signup tied to the association
- A SISU Live card embedded in the association's own homepage
Naked SPACE
The fourth SISU asked what happens to a building when its original purpose runs out, and held itself in two reused spaces in two countries to make the point.
- One programme spanning two cities running simultaneously
- A third language, published as a full parallel edition
- Speaker, moderator, film, and venue pages in each language
- A shared photographic record of both cities
Who it was for
The same site, read four different ways.
A symposium site is read under pressure: while travelling, between sessions, and years later by someone trying to remember what was said.
01
Someone following an event they cannot attend
In 2016 the site had to convey that something was happening right now, in a hall in Tallinn, to people reading from somewhere else. That is a different job from listing information.
02
Someone deciding which city to attend
In 2017 a visitor in Estonia and a visitor in Switzerland were looking at the same symposium but making different practical decisions about travel, venue, and which sessions were actually in front of them.
03
The people running it
A small association team, working in Estonian, needed to publish and correct the site themselves during an event where the programme changes up to the moment it starts.
04
The symposium after it ended
Two symposiums produced a permanent record. The schedules, the talks, the venues, and the photography had to stay legible long after both events closed.
Design decisions
Build the structure the event actually has.
Time, language, city, and editorial ownership were modelled as properties of the content rather than as separate copies of the website.
01
2016 · Presence
Make a three-day event feel like it is happening.
The proposal for Welcome Stranger! argued that a symposium site should feel like a live broadcast rather than a brochure. That produced a running live blog, a schedule aware of the current time, and a card on the association's homepage naming whoever was on stage and who was next.
- Thirty-three live posts published across the three days
- Twenty-six of them attached to a specific speaker, not just a timestamp
- A live card on the association's site pointing back into the symposium
02
2016 · Language
Give each language its own address, not a query parameter.
Estonian and English were routed separately down to the URL, so an Estonian reader moved through /kava and /esinejad while an English reader moved through /schedule and /speakers. The language is part of the address rather than a setting applied on top of one.
- Localised routes for schedule, speakers, films, news, and registration
- Each language holds its own documents and its own editorial state
- A missing translation is a normal state, not a broken page
03
2016 · Editing
Hand the organisers a CMS in their own language.
The admin interface was labelled in Estonian, field by field, for the association staff who would actually use it. Speakers, schedule, news, and films were editable content types, which is why the site could be corrected during the event without a developer.
- Administrative labels written in Estonian rather than left in English
- Every part of the programme editable as content, not markup
- Media handled through an image service instead of manual file management
04
2017 · Two cities
One schedule that knows which city each session belongs to.
Naked SPACE was not two events with two websites. It was one programme, partly shared and partly local. Every entry carries its own city scope, so the same published schedule reads correctly whether you are standing in the Neubad or at Telliskivi.
- Sessions marked as shared across both cities or specific to one
- Speakers, films, and moderators carry a city alongside a time
- Two days, two venues, and one programme in a single record
05
2026 · Preservation
Recover the site when its original stack is no longer safe to run.
Both sites were Meteor applications backed by hosted databases that no longer exist. Years later the 2017 content survived only as a physical database snapshot. Recovering it meant reading that snapshot back, exporting the collections, and rebuilding the site as a static archive.
- Content read back out of a raw database snapshot into structured JSON
- Public collections separated from accounts and authorisation data
- The archive now runs as a plain Next.js site with no live services
Then and now
The content outlived the stack that produced it.
What was built for each symposium and what keeps it readable today are different systems holding the same material.
2016
Meteor + Orion
A reactive application with a content system localised for the association's own staff, running as part of the association's website.
2017
Meteor + MongoDB
A standalone trilingual site with its own admin, deployed to a single server through Meteor Up and Docker.
Media
Cloudinary
Speaker portraits, venue photography, and the two-city gallery held outside the application, which is why the imagery is still intact today.
2026
Next.js archive
The 2017 content, exported from the original database and served statically, so the symposium can be read without restoring any infrastructure.
What the projects produced
Two published events and a surviving record.
Both symposiums ended years ago. The material they generated is still complete, still structured, and still possible to read.
01Two symposium editions designed, built, and published for the association
02A live blog and a time-aware programme that made a three-day event feel current
03Localised routing in Estonian and English, extended to German in 2017
04One 2017 schedule covering two days, two venues, and two countries
051,283 visitors and 11,284 pageviews across the 2016 season, with social sharing the largest single source
06The full 2017 content recovered from a database that no longer runs
Organisers
Estonian Association of Interior Architects · Estonian Academy of Arts · Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts
Curators, 2017
Sibylla Amstutz (Lucerne) · Tüüne-Kristin Vaikla (Tallinn)
Graphic design
Stuudio Stuudio
Web development
Kris Haamer / HAAM
The long view
A website is also an archive.
These sites were built for three days and for two days. What they left behind is a record of two international symposiums: schedules, talks, a film programme, venues in two countries, and a hundred and seventeen photographs. None of it was designed to be permanent, and all of it nearly disappeared with the hosting.
Recovering the 2017 site took reading the content back out of a raw database snapshot, separating the public material from personal accounts, and rebuilding it as a static archive that depends on nothing. That is the part of the work that lasts, and it is the reason this case study can still show you the event.