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On Stroomi Beach, a sandy strip of coastline on the western edge of Tallinn that opens up to a wide, shallow bay ideal for families with children, a new, modern-looking beach house is being erected in a manner that recalls Lego or Minecraft. This soon-to-be completed structure, which juts out toward the sea, fits together like a three-dimensional puzzle and will soon offer Stroomi Beach sunbathers access to changing rooms, a restaurant, and a cafe.
It was designed using an innovative digital platform created by a company, Creatomus. Renee Puusepp is the co-founder and CEO of Creatomus. In many ways, the company combines its joint talents in architecture and computational design. He initially studied architecture at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) in Tallinn and pursued a master’s and PhD in architecture and computing at the University of East London. Over the years, he has been involved in technology companies and is a senior researcher at EKA’s Timber Architecture Research Centre (PAKK).
Creatomus is an interface that offers users what it refers to as “configurators” so that they can configure modular buildings, obtain pricing for constructing them, and even be put in touch with a construction company that will arrive and set them up, just as is underway on Stroomi Beach.
Puusepp maintains that Creatomus’s concept is the ability to provide custom architectural design at scale and in a circular way. That means the buildings constructed using its designs can easily be reconfigured, added onto, or relocated and assembled elsewhere.
“We see ourselves as innovators in digital technology, but in the construction world,” Puusepp comments. “We design circular buildings. This is what building them in a factory allows us to do.”
Creatomus’s main target groups are manufacturers of buildings, who can use the company’s platform to toy around with different configurations, and even allow end users a bigger say in the design process, says Puusepp. “We give them the software that allows them to create modular designs quickly,” he says. “It allows them to design buildings for their clients and get offers for constructing them.” The company’s platform has been used in various projects worldwide, including a factory in South Korea, facilities in Germany, and a Tallinn kindergarten.
“We designed a kindergarten for the City of Tallinn that is 3,000 square meters,” says Puusepp. “That can house 10 groups of kids.”
Another interesting project is in Ukraine, where Creatomus is working on a medical facility that will be erected near the frontline. There is also the Stroomi Beach building. “We have devised an industrial-like system,” remarks Puusepp. “It’s like Lego, you can build many things using it.”
Bootstrapping It
While the real-world needs that Creatomus serves might seem slightly removed from the big names of the Estonian technology scene—think Wise, Pipedrive, or Pactum AI—the company is entirely a product of the country’s innovation-friendly and tech-supportive culture. Puusepp and his cofounders conjured up the idea for Creatomus at a Garage48 GreenTech Hackathon in 2015, winning the competition and being the audience’s favourites. The firm has been evolving ever since and has benefited from Enterprise Estonia grants.
Mostly, the company has been bootstrapping it, living off the income it generates from projects.
Creatomus now employs around 10 people, both architects and developers, and is preparing to scale as new projects come in and years of hard work on the computational side are paying off. Puusepp believes that the company’s platform offers the opportunity to change how buildings are made and to allow the construction sector to break out of old habits.
“Software is a way of bringing scalability to architecture,” says Puusepp. “And to change construction, we must change how we design buildings.” Using the company’s platform makes the ensuing designs simpler and easier to install. This, in turn, supports creativity, Puusepp notes, as the software takes the place of hours spent sketching plans. It is scalable because buildings can be customised, designed and manufactured at scale. Puusepp calls this “mass customisation.”
“Our software allows you to do it all online, without spending months designing modular buildings,” he says. “You can move the blocks around, and the software will allow you to do it.”
That ability has caught the attention of clients. The firm claims Creatomus configurators have been used to design thousands of buildings ordered from factories in the US, EU, and Australia. Puusepp acknowledges that Estonia’s image as a digital nation has helped.
“Of course, when we go outside Estonia, they know that we have e-solutions,” says Puusepp. “Even in Singapore or South Korea, people come up to me and say, ‘I’m an e-resident,” he says, referring to the country’s e-Residency program. “That’s a great start. If we are Estonian and have a digital solution, starting a conversation is easy.”
Room for innovation
The kinds of modular buildings that Creatomus is helping to create might seem entirely contemporary, but Puusepp has found inspiration in the wooden apartment houses built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Tallinn districts like Kadriorg and Kalamaja or in the Georgian Terraced Houses built a hundred years earlier in the UK. In both cases, the structures followed a somewhat set design, but there was room for innovation.
“They follow the same patterns, but are never the same,” Puusepp notes.
It’s the same for the modular buildings that Creatomus is helping to bring to towns and cities in increasing numbers. Puusepp, the company, expects rapid growth this year, driven by the maturity of its software and technology.
He adds that the company has also benefited from adopting generative AI, which has allowed it to better provide customers with images of what designs would look like when assembled. Creatomus’ designers can now use its platform to create shape architecture, slip those houses into a location of their choosing, and change the exterior’s appearance, all on demand.
“Generative AI can make the building look a certain way with different materials, colours, or environments,” says Puusepp. “You can say, ‘Show me this in Hamburg, in New York, in Tallinn, and it will,” he says. “All of this just recently became possible.”
According to Puusepp, Creatomus is just starting to scratch the surface of what it can achieve with AI, but is already seeing great results. But could a robot design modular buildings? Never. They lack that human, creative touch. “I don’t think AI will replace architects,” Puusepp says.
