As part of the European Green Deal, the European Commission presented its sustainable and smart mobility strategy in December 2020. For the rail sector, the strategy calls for a doubling of investments for high-speed rails by 2030 in the EU. This ambition gave lead to a project in the Baltic region. Instead of ending the development of the Rail Baltica corridor in Tallinn and changing the mean of transport to ferries to cross the Baltic Sea towards Finland, the FinEst Link project proposes to further extend the European rail network by an underground tunnel connecting Tallinn and Helsinki, resulting in a new metropolitan region across the Baltic Sea.
Along the tunnel route, two upcoming developments are reinterpreted following Kazuo Shinohara's design principles of his 4th Style. The two proposals should be read as interconnected components, physically linked across the Baltic Sea by the FinEst Link project, and conceptually connected through the precise alignment of the cylindrical elements. This integration creates a FinEst Zero-Degree Machine, designed to contribute to the tunnel's efficiency and ensure that the substantial investment in this tunnel project is justified.
