In the autumn of 1998 and winter 1999, we made four trips to Tallinn, three for interviews and one for photography.1 Our original plan was to explore the origins of contemporary Estonian architecture and to sketch out how the post-socialist network of actors in the production of architecture works. The issues we were interested in included how the new financial and political situation has influenced the conditions of architecture, what architectural design is like in the rapidly changing Tallinn context, and what the possible urban visions are: in what direction the city is currently being developed.
We soon found out that it was not easy to get answers. As if something essential was invariably left without articulation, was allowed to remain between the lines - as in the anecdote about the Armenian mobsters who commissioned a luxurious residence complete with swimming pool, but failed to communicate the small detail that their business was not doing very well and they expected a hitman to appear any minute. We felt a similar presence of clear and odd, visible and hidden everywhere in the city. At each moment, at each corner the Tallinn contrasts, the surprises and the inexplicable traces seemed to say, “because you can see me, I’m insignificant”. The significant, the rich in meaning, was covert and always somewhere else.

The Era of Hibernation
The Second World War decreased Estonia’s population by 300,000; the reasons included emigration, exile and execution by first the Germans and then Soviets, and actual warfare.2 After the war, the population of Tallinn increased rapidly: the central government gave Tallinn back its pre-independence position as an industrial centre of the empire, and consequently many Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian workers moved in. Air raids and the resulting fires had demolished about half of the housing stock of Tallinn, but new investments were made in industry and infrastructure. Cities and towns suffered from dire lack of housing, and more and more residents were forced to share their homes. The housing area per person decreased from the 15.5 m² of 1940 to 8.8 m² in 1955. Khrushchev was the first to create a coherent housing policy in the Soviet Union. The pre-war living space standard was reached and exceeded in Estonia only in the 1970s.
Soviet Estonia was in a supercooled state: waiting. Due to the shortage of housing, old buildings were not demolished, for their residents would have simply joined the housing queues that were long enough even without them. On the other hand, neither price of land nor ownership issues prevented the city from expanding into previously undeveloped areas. The philosophy of urban building was also based on the industrial duplication of large suburban units, ‘mikroraions’. Consequently everything old - stone buildings as well as the surrounding wooden suburbs - remained untouched or slowly dilapidated, when the residents moved to the better-equipped new suburbs.
But the city centre honouring socialist industrialism never became more than a utopian ideal. Some public buildings, mainly constructed before the 1980s Olympic Games, do give some impression of this vision, but there were never enough funds to create the new spatial order. The boulevards connecting the monuments existed only in plans, and Tallinn became a collage in which wooden workers’ barracks from the Czarist era and huge hotels for the storage of Western tourists meet in the same space, and the 4,000-seat Linnahall for socialist masses and the nondescript railway track used for coal transportation are interwoven.
“What was Soviet time: freedom! You can be free in a prison”, explains Vilen Künnapu. Künnapu sounds almost nostalgic when he describes the past: “The 80s was a time of thinking, being a world citizen through magazines, philosophy - all major philosophers were available as Russian translations. We (Estonian architects and cultural intellectuals) had our own sphere. We knew very little what was happening outside Soviet Union but we were able to think and have fun, we organised events such as movie festivals of our own. Cultural links to Moscow were also fairly open, and I for example did studies on 1920s Russian Constructivism... Where you at that time could do things was in collective farms, where the s.c. red barons commissioned things also from the [officially sidetracked] Tallinn architects...” This is what Künnapu says of today’s situation: “The 1990s are pragmatical.”

New Estonia
In recent years, Tallinn has undergone a veritable construction boom. The most visible results are the shiny service stations by the main routes and the competing bank headquarters in the city centre: Hansapank, Forekspank, EVEA-pank, Hoiupank, Ühispank...4 There are also many new commercial buildings: the liveliest shopping streets in the Old Town have been revamped by the Italian investor Ernesto Preatoni; Stockmann is currently raising its two-storey department store by three more storeys; new car markets and malls are cropping up in the outskirts. The loathed small kiosks, pioneers of the transition period, seem to have disappeared for good.
Raivo Puusepp is one of the most prodigious designers of the 1990s; his designs include the Ühispank ‘skyscraper’. Puusepp’s approach represents most of contemporary Estonian architecture: it is indeed pragmatic. In his opinion, the most significant change in the conditions of the architect’s work in the post-communist era has been the increase of financial responsibility. “Usually people say my buildings are ugly... I’m a modern box architect. Boxes are inexpensive for the client.”
Today’s Estonia is trying to solve basic problems and meet primary space and symbols needs. The work of the architect is to concentrate on economical construction and feasible application of products and systems. The thinking of Estonian architects is much more dominated by building elements, systems, and products available than that of their Finnish colleagues. The prevailing philosophy is a Modernist focus on the building as an object consisting of independent parts. Architectural space, the Finnish fetish, is not part of the vocabulary of Estonian architects. Mikko Heikkinen and Markku Komonen perhaps represent similar thinking in Finland; yet the result may be slightly more refined thanks to more well-to-do clients and an atmosphere favourable to beliefs in architecture as art (as well).

Complete article in Arkkitehti-lehti 3/99.

Panu Lehtovuori and Klaske Havik