Three Cases of the Estonian Way of Life
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| Three Cases of the Estonian Way of Life | |
| Piret Lindpere | |
| Eesti keeles | ||
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Home is no longer a dwelling, but the untold story of a life being lived. John Berger |
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An Estonian knows what sort of life he wants to lead. The dream of many families in city apartments is to escape the urban noise, the grey dormitory regions, dirty corridor lifts, troublesome neighbours. An Estonian dreams of his own house, of a garden swamped in greenery and of the summer meat grilling on the terrace. Designing houses for private individuals is a large-scale business in Estonia, like nowhere else in the world. This is luxury. There is practically no state-subsidised housing in Estonia; private residential architecture has been developed over the past decade by those possessing above-average opportunities for building. It had already started in the Soviet time: as a protest against the huge box-like constructions, wealthier Estonians built big houses that they could often ill afford. We are talking here of the new residential areas in Tallinn and its surroundings that spill extensively and without restriction across the fields, forests, meadows and settlements around the capital city. Most of the seaside lands have been bought up from the former farmers and local governments, and then sold off again. As a result of such unregulated real estate development, the 'habitable' zone has been stretched along the coast for nearly 50 km. Like a selfish cuckoo, the existing infrastructure is being exploited as much as possible - until a peaceful region has become a chaotic settlement area where the density of habitation is higher than in the urban living space, and the advantage of a private residential house - an interactive relationship between man and nature - has practically vanished. The choice of cheap private residences or part of a terraced house, offered by the real estate developers who have put on the market 100-140 sq m houses costing about 1.5-2 million EEK (appr. 95 000-125 000 Euros, Ed.), is staggering. A cheap house, though, can only be erected in a huge residential area, not separately. The elements of walls are produced automatically, which makes it possible to save on labour costs; a little compact building consisting of small elements is easy to transport and assemble. The result is a flat set up on a plot of land, a standard and anonymous housing product, meant for everybody and suitable for no-one, which is based on the belief in an ideal model of today's way of life and necessities, designated to satisfy the 'average needs' of a family. The notion of home has thus expanded 'noticeably' - superceding the apartment door leading to the garden gate. An Estonian has never been fond of his neighbours. The ideal would be not to have any neighbours at all. When a house owner in a real estate village is faced with the fact that he has a neighbour, and quite close to his limit of tolerance, then who that neighbour is becomes vital. Clients in their new homes naturally expect to see people with a similar standard of living, the same degree of wealth, and of the same age. They fail to see that this is the first step on the way to becoming a ghetto... |
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First. Domestic concentration camp There is real cacophony on both sides of the roads leading out of Tallinn. The first regular pattern in housing emerges after a ten-minute drive, attracts travellers' attention and startles. On a windy wasteland, by painfully straight streets, about one hundred identical wooden-frame houses stand in military order, separated by chain-link fences (architects Pille Nagel and Katrin Tomberg). The Teelahkme residential area seems at first sight quite a bit like a refugee or concentration camp, further emphasised by the 3-metre high noise-prevention wall by the big road. Entering the area and viewing it at eye level, one's attitude becomes less harsh. The plots are not so small after all (800-1000 sq m), the houses look like little cosy habitats for people who have dreamed of a modest, light and cheery Scandinavian-style cottage by the sea, and who are wary of any bolder manifestations of architectural ideas. Their life has regained meaning, and in their mind's eye they see hedges, pergolas and apple trees; Teelahkme is a village, the inseparable parts of which are the washing hung out to dry in the wind, kids playing football in the streets, and cats poised on garden fences. A modest barrack-like standard project is, in many ways, more normal and environmentally more soothing than some pretentious monstrosity concocted by an over-zealous architect. |
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Second. Elitist containers The Aaviku district near Tallinn is like an oasis squeezed in the midst of the architectural hotchpotch surrounding the capital city (the sea is somewhere). Primarily thanks to architectural critics, this area has earned supreme praise in the media. As an exception in the real estate practice, the area had an architectural competition, won by one of the most elite architectural companies in Estonia (architects Emil Urbel and Indrek Erm). The mere idea - an ordinary citizen being able to own the creation of a top architect! The architects have made the cheaply built houses look like luxury ones! Aaviku is a very clear departure from the Teelahkme settlement mentioned above. It's as if Teelahkme was meant for banal, boringly conventional grey people while Aaviku was intended for people with good taste, possessing an open perception of life oriented towards the future. The houses have bright colours: yellow, green, blue, orange. They rely on minimalism and the aesthetics of functionalism: flat roofs, terraces, boxy bulks, asymmetry. Altogether over eighty one- to two-storey houses that at first sight seem totally identical. |
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The vivid colours resemble the Hageneiland residential district in a suburb of The Hague (1998-2002) by the Rotterdam architectural office MVRDV, which was awarded the annual prize of the Netherlands Architecture Institute, and is one of the most well-known manifestations of contemporary economical residential architecture. The difference, however, is that while the latter contains ironic hommage, joining seeming traditionalism, ultra-modern materials and innovation, the Aaviku area is hopelessly unambiguous. The MVRDV houses are situated in occasional groups connected by winding paths, thus leaving enough space (despite the purity of style) for daily life and personal touch. Aaviku, on the other hand, excludes the inhabitants' preferences and wishes in designing their own gardens, and only relies on strict parallels, colour and form. There is nothing excessive here, nor would there be any space for it. There is in fact no space for people - the plots are startlingly small, the houses resemble big containers in a harbour. The developer's aim - to squeeze as many houses into a small plot of land as possible - is only too obvious. The windows and the terraces only face south, there are no windows in the north walls, and the houses face other blank walls. At least one of the very Estonian desires has been achieved here - neighbours' eyes do not meet.
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Third. Public seclusion.As is clear from the previous paragraph, living in a modernist house requires an educated and intelligent client. The latter is a rare occurrence in Estonia. There are even fewer of those for whom living in modern architecture indeed coincides with lifestyle, who will not hang plush frilled curtains in the windows of a minimalist house and who do not appreciate the house only as a symbol of social status. The third residential area is not connected with the life of the capital city, being situated in the summer resort of Pärnu (44 000 inhabitants), an hour and a half's drive from Tallinn. Urban sprawl is not (yet) a problem in Pärnu, with the hottest areas located by the coast, bordering the city centre. In 2003 a neo-functionalist cluster of villas was erected in that unique location (architect Kalle Vellevoog). Just as there are endless versions of Alvar Aalto's Villa Mairea in Finland, the white functionalism of the 1930s keeps cropping up in Estonia. This style designates secure good taste referring to modernity and traditions at the same time. Pärnu, with its 1930s summer resort architecture, is naturally the best place for that. Six white villas form one housing area; considering their size (200-400 sq m), the houses stand quite close to one another. |
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The white transparent boxes of neo-functionalism symbolise ethics and morality, offer an equivalent of an ideal home and enable the architect to realise his creative ideals. A spacious sunny terrace is a perfect place for morning coffee or evening paper reading, and the neatly mown lawns and arbor vitae hedges produce a connection with the coastal park. The inhabitants clearly appreciate privacy; at the same time they are well aware that their isolation takes place under the close scrutiny of the neighbouring houses and the public, so a relationship with urban space is inevitable. Life in a luxury settlement seems to take place on a stage; the interest of the public in those who can afford to arrange their lives according to their emotional principles is eager, unceasing and not overly benign. This settlement has one advantage that the others do not: nothing here is presented as something else. There is no need to pretend that the containers are elitist architecture, or marshy wastelands a slice of picturesque nature. On a more grandiose note, one could say that here the ideals of the new Estonian society have found their shape. Lifestyle, alas, is largely determined by financial means, and there is hardly anything grandiose about that particular topic. Piret Lindpere (1963), architecture critic and art historian, since 1992 works in the Center for Contemporary Arts, Estonia as an assistant director. See also www.cca.ee |
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| Estonian Art 2/03 (13) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2003 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 | |
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