Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence

Ines Weizman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317700982
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architektur
• Subtopic: Architektur Allgemein

Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence maps out and expands upon the methodologies of architectural action and reinvigorates the concept of dissent within the architectural field. It expands the notion of dissidence to other similar practices and strategies of resistance, in a variety of historical and geographical contexts.The book also discusses how the gestures and techniques of past struggles, as well as 'dilemmas' of working in politically suppressive regimes, can help to inform those of today.

This collection of essays from expert scholars demonstrates the multiple responses to this subject, the potential and dangers of dissidence, and thus constructs a robust lexicon of concepts that will point to possible ways forward for politically and theoretically committed architects and practitioners.

Part I

Dissidence through architecture

Chapter 1

The turning point in 1978

Architects of the Tallinn School and their late socialist public

Andres Kurg

Introduction

This chapter will examine a group of Estonian architects who worked in Tallinn during the 1970–80s and the critical role they played in relation to the era's dominant Soviet architectural practices, rigid building regulations and norms. These architects saw their profession as part of Estonia's cultural sphere rather than a discipline subject to industrial construction, and several members of this retrospectively titled ‘Tallinn School’¹ played an active role in the period's art scene. With pursuits ranging from walks and happenings in abandoned urban areas to films, slide shows and drawings, they attempted to use contemporary art to organise the environment in order to implement a critique of the institution of architecture. The group's 1978 exhibition at the Academy of Sciences Library in Tallinn generated far-reaching societal discussions on the position of architecture, and this had significant repercussions for the Architects' Union elite.

The issue of dissidence – and more broadly, an open resistance through cultural forms – has repeatedly been discussed throughout the analysis of late Soviet society, with its use often motivated by the politics of the present. Promoted by the émigrés from the Eastern bloc, and Western liberal forces from the 1960s onwards, the discourse of this kind of dissidence has concentrated on writers, artists and musicians who were opposed to the dominant socialist regimes and operated in the so-called private sphere – i.e., publishing in samizdat journals, organising apartment exhibitions, inventing cunning ways for sending their works abroad to international exhibitions. For the countries annexed to the Soviet Union during the Second World War, the representation of cultural production as dissident has been equally widespread and intertwined with contemporary interests. Although in the Baltic context most researchers have agreed on the difficulty of demarcating an exact border between the official and unofficial spheres, a narrative of dissidence fitted well within the discourse of national liberation and the identity politics of the 1990s, which aimed to set the countries off from their Soviet- and Russian-dominated past. In retrospect, this interpretation has also influenced the reception of the Tallinn School architects, whose practice has sometimes been categorised as ‘resistance’ (Kalm, 2001, p. 391) contributing directly to the struggle for national independence (Lapin, 2003, p. 235). I want to show that the still prevalent binary model of oppression versus resistance is not sufficient for understanding the critical works of Estonian architects which emerged as alternatives to international-style modernism in the early 1970s. Using the work of anthropologist Alexei Yurchak on late socialism and his differentiation between activists, dissidents and the public of svoi (us, ours), it is possible to argue that the case of the Tallinn architects poses a challenge to the analysis of architectural dissent in Soviet society. Rather than withdrawing and isolating oneself from public discussions about architecture, the architects themselves became active agents in the institutional power struggles of the late 1970s – a fact that poses the question of whether the oppositional strategies travelling from art to architecture can have a broader influence in society. Studying the work of the Tallinn architects in light of their 1970s writings and projects offers the possibility of a different reading of their position in society – one that reveals the changes in the decade to diverge from mainstream interpretations.

‘Architectural Exhibition 78’

On 22 May 1978, the ‘Architectural Exhibition 78’, comprising fourteen architects-artists-designers, opened in the foyer of the Academy of Sciences Library in Tallinn. Although the premises for the exhibition were officially organised through the youth section of the Architects' Union of the Estonian SSR, the show differed from the usual survey exhibition by presenting the work of a group of architects who shared a similar educational background (all had attended the State Art Institute in Tallinn), as well as criticism towards existing architectural practices. The participants – Leonhard Lapin, Jüri Okas, Toomas Rein, Veljo Kaasik, Avo-Himm Looveer, Jaan Ollik, Tiit Kaljundi, Andres Ringo, Ülevi Eljand, Harry Shein, Vilen Künnapu, Ain Padrik, designer Matti Õunapuu and artist Tõnis Vint – used the exhibition as a platform for presenting their criticism of the inflexible building regulations, Soviet mass construction, standardisation and modernist urban planning and to launch a dialogue about architecture's role in the cultural sphere rather than civil engineering. Leonhard Lapin, one of the initiators of the exhibition, retrospectively wrote:

In 1978 we presented ‘pure ideas’, as our aim was to show architecture as an independent form of art, a manifestation of the spiritual, but also as an independent and influential feature that played a part in social processes.

(Lapin, 1996, p. 122)

This coexistence between a desire for autonomy of architecture (pure ideas) and its engagement (playing a part in social processes) was a characteristic of the works in this exhibition, its participants' different individual preferences, and other practices of the Tallinn School throughout the 1970s.

An interest in architecture's social role had already been demonstrated in 1972, when several core members of the group wrote a ‘Program for an exhibition of new architecture’ that declared, ‘In architecture, everything is permissible’ and that the proposed exhibition aims to ‘free architecture from local dogma … [and] cultivate the formal possibilities of architecture.’ (Kaljundi et al., 1979, p. 6). The text ended with an almost political call: ‘Let contemporary architecture represent a new democracy!’ (ibid.). Signed by Kaljundi, Künnapu, Lapin, Looveer and Eljand, and written a year after their graduation from the architecture department, the manifesto took a stand against the overregulation of architectural practices and the rigidity of the rules of construction, but it also saw a connection between formal experimentation and political engagement. The emerging democracy was to be understood in the context of architecture; it was one that would be liberated from Soviet stereotypes and embrace diverse approaches.²

After graduation, most of the members of the group were employed in the design office of EKE Projekt, which was known for its progressive atmosphere and clients from the collective farm construction company KEK, who welcomed bold architectural solutions. Collective farms (kolkhozes) had amassed remarkable wealth through agricultural production from the 1960s onwards; their co-operative ownership enabled the farms to redirect profits into industrial and public buildings. By the 1970s this resulted in a boom for these collective farm buildings, which often included public structures that combined kolkhoz administration in small towns with spaces for concerts or cinemas, housing schemas inspired by constructivism (such as the 700-metre-long Golden Home for Pärnu KEK by Toomas Rein) or recreational buildings (the sanatorium in Pärnu by Vilen Künnapu). Designing kolkhoz buildings allowed for close relationships with construction teams and enabled the architects to experiment with and use a variety of methods and materials, in-situ concrete being the most important of them. While architects in state design offices were restricted by the standard details prescribed by the building committee, the designers at EKE Projekt managed occasionally to rid themselves from such restrictions.

Parallel to their design work throughout the 1970s, several architects in this group published polemical articles in the cultural media on urban issues and the built environment. They discussed these topics in a different way and style from previous pragmatic modes of writing. In addition to addressing contemporary issues, these texts debated complexities in the history of architecture through reviews of architecture's place in art nouveau, art deco, Russian constructivism, De Stijl and other movements of the twentieth century avant-garde.

Opposed to the narrow specialisation of the previous generation, this group also actively sought dialogue and cooperation with other cultural fields. Tiit Kaljundi later observed:

The traditional master-architect approach to design and corresponding self-assurance, was left in the background…. Leo [Lapin] declared from the outset that in order to do something in architecture, you should explore other fields.

(Kaljundi, 2008, pp. 313–14)

The critique of Soviet architectural practices also corresponded to wider public expectations – the dissolution of architecture in mass construction was easy to understand through the discourse about the alienation of the prefabricated suburbs. Furthermore, as the modernist industrial society was equated with Soviet socialism, it was seen as something inimitably negative and its condemnation reverberated with the emerging impulse for national differentiation in Estonia and other Baltic countries, which led to the importance of identity politics in the 1980s.³

The architectural exhibition of 1978 was in many ways a culmination of the critique of mass construction and alienation in the new housing areas, displaying critical projects that directly addressed the prefabricated suburbs and also occasionally utopian proposals for redeveloping cities. It even made ironic remarks on the institution of architecture itself. The exhibition was divided in two, with photographs of the architects' built works hanging near the entrance on a white wall, and projects and conceptual proposals placed on high stands lined up along the glazed foyer. Beginning with Leonhard Lapin's ‘Concept of Invisible Architecture’ and ‘Concept of Spontaneous Architecture’, which called for architecture that would be spiritual and a free art, rather than overly rational, the works ended with Alber Trapeež's (Lapin's pseudonym) ‘Architectural styles in 20th-century Estonia’ in which the wedding photos of the participants were grouped under different forms of modern architecture.

Figure 1.1 Architectural exhibition 1978 at the Estonian Academy of Sciences Library in Tallinn, exhibition design Tiit Kaljundi and Jüri Okas

The works were displayed on square, 1 × 1-metre cardboard panels – a standard method of exhibiting architectural designs in state offices, as well as for the public. This generic format (and the generic title) could explain the agitated reception of the exhibition; critiques of architecture were mostly made through irony, and there were no practical solutions to the problems and questions posed. A reviewer emphasised the effect of surprise when writing about the show:

when people from the streets are coming, then there must be something unusual on view. This time it is an architecture (or even art) show, and the book of inscriptions and opinions is used very often.

(Karu, 1978)

Critics who came from the professional circles often displaced this surprise as a critique of ‘the young and the angry ones', who would soon settle down and integrate with the system’ (Härmson, 1978).

The exhibited works were, formally, surprisingly different from one another, and because participants did not make any prior agreements on content, the divergent approaches of individual members occasionally became obvious. Harry Shein showed allegorical black and white montage images of the prefabricated housing areas in Tallinn, with a corpse and a vandalised car in front of the partly ruined (either intentional...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• CRITIQUES: Critical Studies in Architectural Humanities
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Illustration credits
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: architecture and the paradox of dissidence
• Part I: Dissidence through architecture
• Part II: Pedagogy as site of dissent
• Part III: Possible geographies of architecture: between dissidence and activism
• Part IV: Dissident ecologies
• Index