Olev Siinmaa’s villa restored
Mart Kalm

	Functionalist architecture has a special meaning in Estonia. Throughout the Soviet era, early 1930s white houses symbolized the pre-war independence, a sign of how wealthy, European and modern we were. It did not matter that we had actually not been that wealthy, and that Estonian modern architecture was quite provincial in a European context – for Estonians it was and is charming. During the entire 20th century, the summer resort Pärnu was among the most progressive Estonian towns architecturally. The small town of 50 000 inhabitants has no architecture school or any other institutional support, but ambitious clients and good architects have productively met here several times. One of the golden periods was during the wars, when Pärnu, more than other old Estonian summer resorts, managed to recover from the loss of clients from post-revolutionary St Petersburg. Holiday-makers from Finland and Sweden were successfully attracted, with a liner going between Pärnu and Stockholm in summer.
	In 1925, Olev Siinmaa, who had studied in Wismar and Konstanz, and was the son of a local furniture manufacturer, was elected Pärnu’s town architect. In that position, Siinmaa paid a lot of attention to the coastal areas and planned several key functionalist buildings there, such as the Beach Hotel (together with Anton Soans, 1935–37) and the Beach Café, with its concrete mushroom-shaped balcony (1938–39). As the town employed its architect full time, he was not allowed to undertake private projects. Even the project for his own house is unsigned. In 1931–33, Siinmaa built a house for himself on the quiet side of the main street, Rüütli, in the old town of Pärnu. It is a small plot of land, uncomfortably triangular, next to an inner wall of a half-levelled bastion. The town architect was just the man to demonstrate his skills in a place that had been rejected for several hundred years. Architects’ own houses are often test labs for trying out new ideas, and thus the home of Olev Siinmaa is among the most radically functionalist buildings in Estonia. Pärnu construction rules permitted building against the boundary of a plot, and thus Siinmaa pushed the house close to the neighbouring buildings, as a result of which his windows opened on three sides and a small front garden was possible. However, the functions of a home in a traditional small town all changed. The courtyard, with its well, woodshed, workshops and laundry, were all in the cellar, and instead of drying laundry in the attic, it was done on a flat roof terrace covered by a parapet. There was a balcony for sunbathing next to the bedroom, and a small balcony for beating carpets opened from the stairwell. The light smooth walls, no roof and wide windows are classically functionalist, whereas the triangular plot provides the façades with unexpected restlessness. The tiny triangular bay window of the entrance hall perfectly suits the protruding corners. The house, therefore, also reveals a layer of the jagged form plays of the previous decade’s expressionism.
	The ground floor follows the principle of modern flowing space, where the office, living room and dining room all merge into one another. This was partly necessary because of building on the boundary of the plot, because otherwise the dining room deep within the house would have remained in darkness. In addition to the missing wall, the dining room is made lighter by an inside window opening into the hall. It is tempting to find traces here of an interest in checking the interior space and watching people moving around the house typical of villas by Adolf Loos. The living room is in fact higher than the other rooms, and thus the bedroom on top is raised, so that a small reference to Loos’s Raumplan can indeed be seen, although otherwise Siinmaa remains a practical small town architect compared with the great Austrian. Together with his wife and stepdaughter, Olev Siinmaa lived in the house until 1944, when the family fled from the Soviet occupation to Sweden. During the Soviet era, the legendary architect’s house belonged to the Pärnu Sanitary and Epidemic Centre and was well looked after. Regained independence witnessed large-scale privatisation of state and town property. In 1997, the Tallinn businessman Toomas Truuvert bought the house. At the Estonian Museum of Architecture he had seen an exhibition on Estonian functionalism organised by DOCOMOMO, an organisation protecting modern architecture. Truuvert believed that an excellent way to spend his money would be to restore the pre-war villa and make it his summer home. The whole process dragged on longer than expected, and the villa was completed only in 2006. As compensation, it was declared the best annual project in Pärnu and it also received the annual restoration award of the Estonian Cultural Endowment.
	Although the house was in relatively good condition, hydro-isolation was necessary, as flooding is a fairly common phenomenon in low-lying Pärnu. The wire fence between the front garden’s gas pipes, one of the first technical garden designs, was completely rusted and had to be replaced. The Estonian climate does not allow building without eaves, as rain damages walls, making it necessary to whitewash the house anew. The carelessly fitted tin roof of the Soviet era was replaced. The roof window in the upper floor bathroom had been closed by Soviet builders, but was restored. Windows needed to be soundproofed because of the frequent open-air concerts nearby. Colour probing revealed that the house had originally been yellowish-white, whereas the first colour of the window frames was light blue. However, Siinmaa’s album, currently at the Museum of Estonian Architecture, contains photographs of the house right after its completion, and there the window frames are darker compared with the walls. The next layer of paint was dark red iron minium, and the window frames were painted with that colour.
	The largely surviving in-built furniture was restored. One of the most remarkable items is the revolving dumb-waiter, covered with curved glass, in front of the sideboard between the kitchen and the dining room. The kitchen furniture, the only known compact functionalist set in Estonia, had not survived, but was reconstructed according to Olev Siinmaa’s drawings. Even the bed for the dog under the sink was restored, although the current owner does not keep pets. It might seem strange today that the cutting board was placed on top of the sink when used, although back then it was obviously not a problem. New furniture was chosen by the interior architect Taso Mähar. Instead of tube furniture, the pre-war living room had non-modernist furniture designed by Siinmaa himself well before the house was built. Nobody replaced furniture when fashion changed. If the husband made furniture for his family after getting married, it was meant to last. Taso Mähar discretely avoided the production of design classics currently widely available, which would have suffocated the work of a lone craftsman such as Siinmaa. The new added pieces of furniture thus enable the owner to spend his summer holiday there, while at the same time emphasising Siinmaa’s architecture. It is laudable that the owner permits those interested in architecture to see the house, by appointment only (+37255560650). Mart Kalm (1963), PhD at the Estonian Academy of Arts (1998), architectural historian. Teaches at the Academy since 1992. Since 2007 Dean of the Faculty of Art and Culture. He has written extensively on the 20th century Estonian architecture.
	| Estonian Art 2/07 (21) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2007 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 |