Letter from Tallinn

Architectural Review, The, May, 2001 by Leonhard Lapin

Tallinn, capital of Estonia, miraculously preserved its medieval heart through all the Baltic political changes of the twentieth century. Now, as Leonhard Lapin writes, things are changing.

The life and culture of the small Republic of Estonia, a country sandwiched between Russia and western Europe, has always been influenced by currents flowing east-west. The Baltic, which separates Estonia from the west, works as a kind of northern reflection of the Mediterranean, using its waterways to integrate Baltic, Russian, Finnish, Swedish, Danish and German cultures. Effects of this artery can be traced far into distant history -- the days of the Hanseatic League, for example, as feeding ideas from the south and east to the far north; for this reason Estonia's capital, Tallinn, with its medieval core, has quite an exotic and historically stratified coloration. Like that of many smaller cities in Estonia, Tallinn's architecture, too, is significantly more 'old-fashioned' than that found to the north in Helsinki and St Petersburg. So, history through Modernism of the twentieth century has been a backdrop of great importance in Estonian architecture and an influence in even the most radical of trends. Est onia's mediaeval architecture was greatly shaped by Swedish and German buildings -- their origin the same as that of the country's conquerors. In the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, Russian influences were powerful in Estonia, because the Tsarist realm introduced Baroque and Classical styles, imported from Italy, as the mandatory official styles of this country too.

Consequently, Tallinn's mediaeval facades were largely rebuilt in the new style. Paradoxical as it may seem, Estonian architecture came into itself on discovering international Functionalism, picked up mainly from German universities; yet in practice it became one with thc local -- a multi-layered and eclectic architectural environment -- maintaining some discernible features. Indeed, the best examples of Estonian Functionalism are found in the buildings constructed of local materials (natural limestone and wood) romanticizing machine aesthetics. Yet, locally-produced cheap cement led to proficiency in constructing concrete buildings as well as in utilizing the technology involved. Estonian-schooled August Kommendant, the builder of Louis Kahn's many concrete buildings, later represented this technology in the US.

Having conquered Estonia in the Second World War, Soviet Russia and its cultural ideology did not accept this Western historical background and called for the mass building of industrially produced, architecture-less grey boxes for sleeping quarters (not 'homes'), created by an imported labour force beside the hearts of the rejected historical cities. The Estonians' only sign of protest to the occupation and Russification was the worship of private homes, a passion originally dating back to the 1930s, in which the standard, gabled-roofed cubicles were decorated with detailing of various local materials and attractive landscaping. But in the 1970s the Estonians, experiencing an ever-intensifying identity crisis, turned increasingly to their own architects. The 1970s and '80s did see a kind of boom in villa-style architecture, which at first followed the neo-Functionalist line inherited from the independence era (1918-1940) and, later, the showy trend carried over from international Modernism. This extraordina ry movement, unique in Eastern Europe, can be characterized as follows: whereas the Poles mounted barricades to oppose the Russian supreme power, the reserved Estonians headed home to their building scaffolding -- both clutching the flag of Freedom and Solidarity.

It was this villa boom of the '70s that gave birth to the Tallinn school of architects -- the school of Estonian architecture most recognized internationally -- which approached design from the experience of international Functionalism, the style which offered the best creative potential considering the primitive building technology and very limited building materials available in the Soviet Union. Leaders of the Tallinn school -- Toomas Rein, Veljo Kaasik, Vilen Kunnapu, Ain Padrik, Avo-Him Looveer, Leonhard Lapin and Tiit Kaljundi -- continue to have a significant impact on architecture and city planning, architectural training and the ideology of architecture today, acting as the conscience of the artificial environment found in this young and unripe Republic of Estonia.

The road of Estonian national architecture through 50 years of occupation was also a battle for preserving old city centres and approximately 1000 country manors. The best of Estonia's architectural scholars were mobilized -- science being the only argument against the simplified ideology of the occupying powers. When Estonia regained independence in 1991 it had managed to keep its historical architecture and dignified environment. But it was the Tallinn school that brought home Europe's newest architectural experiences that included clearly discernible regional architecture. It seems the golden age for Estonia's own achievements in architecture has finally arrived, fostered by ideological freedom and a free market economy, and complemented by an open market for building materials and new, previously unobtainable technologies.