Valve Pormeister - Soviet Estonian star architect
	Liina Jänes

	Despite the Iron Curtain, Soviet Estonian architecture nevertheless boasted several architects who were stars at home, and found recognition abroad. One of them was Pormeister (1922-2002). The work of Valve Pormeister contains various intrigues, offering an opportunity to consider architecture that was produced from the position of 'the other'. Firstly, Pormeister lacked a classical architect's education. Instead she studied landscape architecture, and in addition did two years of agronomy at Tartu University. Secondly, she was a woman. Although Soviet rhetoric did not distinguish between men's and women's work, architecture has always been considered a man's job. Besides, there had been no influential female architects in Estonia before Pormeister.
	Despite these imposed limits, Pormeister established herself as an architect with her first structure - the Flower Pavilion in Pirita Road in Tallinn (1958-1960). The light relief-sensitive exhibition pavilion became a landmark of post-Stalinist architecture in more than one sense. What was innovative here was the free handling of bulk, connection with nature, and transparency. When the state borders opened up, the Flower Pavilion was one of the first and few examples of Estonian architecture that became known outside the Soviet Union. Articles about it were published in the foreign press.(1) After graduating from the Soviet Estonian State Art Institute as a landscape architect, Pormeister took a job in 1952 at the Estonian Agricultural Design Institute (later Estonian Country-building Project Institute). She quickly moved from planning and landscape design to designing buildings and in the 1960s and 1970s became one of the most inventive modernizers of rural architecture in Estonia.
	Besides her main work, Pormeister designed gardening and flower exhibitions both in Tallinn and in Moscow, and attracted attention with her novel design methods. In the overwhelming greyness of the Soviet period, exhibitions organised at the Flower Pavilion stood out with their remarkable colours, and thus became hugely popular, especially the displays of spring flowers, sometimes attracting 5000 visitors a day. Since communication with foreign countries was restricted, in the 1960s Estonian artists began to look to the Nordic countries for direction. The reasons are simple: the few allowed trips for architects were almost entirely to Finland, Finnish specialised magazines were making their rounds and people watched Finnish TV. Nordic-influenced architecture denoted a softer approach to modernism, people-friendly masses, blending a building into the landscape and using natural materials such as wood, bricks and plaster.
	The breakthrough in Estonian architecture in the 1960s was largely connected with the buildings of Valve Pormeister. Her buildings, fitted into the landscape with the sensitive touch of a garden and park designer, created pleasant excitement and influenced the architectural style of many of her contemporaries and younger colleagues. Café Tuljak, built as an extension to the Flower Pavilion in 1964-1965, represents the next stage in Nordic modernism, once again introduced by Valve Pormeister. Instead of the previous friendly and organic interpretation, the mid-1960s saw the domination of horizontal, slightly heavy, rigidly right-angled architecture. The period's favourite element was the horizontal, mostly dark-stained, wooden cornice. The new architectural aesthetics again arrived in Estonia through Finland. A truly significant structure in Soviet Estonian architecture was Valve Pormeister's main building of the Kurtna Poultry Farm (1965-1966). This was an example of total Nordic design in the best sense of the word. Her strengths as an architect are apparent here: a well-considered whole, from the surrounding landscape to the smallest interior details, matching materials of the interior and exterior, precisely calculated views of the building and from the building, and no compromises as regards realisation, which guaranteed the best possible building quality of the time. In Soviet circumstances, where halting, altering and introducing new materials was a daily occurrence, Pormeister skilfully and purposefully established necessary contacts and realised her ideas fully.
	Her contemporaries perceived the Kurtna main building as a small Finnish church influenced by Aalto. Both Aalto and Pormeister detached themselves from mainstream modernism, each forming a powerful exception. Pormeister herself named Richard Neutra as a model for her approach; Frank Lloyd Wright was certainly another influence. Pormeister's creative manner is associated with organic architecture, but in many ways this derived directly from a different professional background. She designed buildings in various styles, introduced architectural innovations in Estonia and in her later works adapted to new fashions; but whatever the style, her objects always take landscape into consideration. By the late 1960s, Pormeister was only designing big bulky objects. Her larger projects included the Plant Protection Centre in Saku (1969-1975) with blocks boldly protruding from the front faŤade; Technical Scool of Jäneda State Farm (1968-1975), whose striking contrast with the historicist manor house, general ground plan and the concrete iron roof of the hall all deserve praise; the neo-functionalist canteen of the Audru State Farm (1973-1978) etc. Two structures designed by Pormeister stand at the edge of Tartu: the main building of the Institute of Cattle Breeding and Veterinary Science (1976- 1984) is a singular terrace house where the wings are partly dug into the relief; the nearby building, belonging to the Estonian Academy of Agriculture (1976-1984), seems like a metaphysical composition on the banks of the Emajõgi River's primeval valley.
	It is interesting that, unlike in the rest of the world, Estonian architectural innovations did not emerge in the capital city, but in the country, in the provinces. The collective farms, which had been rapidly getting wealthier ever since the 1960s, commissioned most works and enabled architects to realise their daring ideas. Commissioning a structure through a special project was also eloquent politically, as this meant doing things 'as in the West'. For the commissioner, it was an opportunity to express some sort of cultural opposition to the prevailing regime. At the same time, these buildings were also approved of and appreciated by the authorities, because they helped illustrate the campaign of catching up with the West. Estonian rural architecture was well known throughout the Soviet Union, and our architects received commissions outside Estonia as well. The most distant point where Pormeister designed something was on Sakhalin Island (projects 1966, not realised). She also designed an administrative and exhibition building for a Moscow horticultural institute (1974). Most of Valve Pormeister's works were, and still are, masterpieces of post-war modernism. Her position in the history of Estonian architecture was evident in the fact that an exhibition of her works in 1972 in the Flower Pavilion was the first architectural personal exhibition in post-war Estonia. The world-class designs of Valve Pormeister perhaps help to make it clear that it is high time to start looking after our Soviet architectural heritage.
	(1) Arkitekt Valve Pormeister Utställningspaviljong i Tallinn. - Arkitektur 1964, no 8, p. 227. the same issue also introduced the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds: Friluftsscen i Tallinn. - Arkitektur 1964, no 8, p. 225. A French magazine also published an article about Pormeister: V. Pormeister. Estonie. - L'architecture d'aujourd'hui XII 1969 - I 1970, no 147. Liina Jänes (1977), researcher at the Museum of Estonian Architecture, curator of the exhibition Valve Pormeister. Modernizer of Estonian Countryside (March-April 2005, Museum of Estonian Architecture, Rotermann Salt Storage) Valve Pormeister (1922-2002), architect, pioneer of postwar architecture. Her modernist buildings are strongly tied with environment-friendly approach
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