Labas vakaras, I’m very happy and honoured to be in Vilnius again. For the past two years I have been coming to this building [National Art Gallery] rather often and I have really enjoyed my collaboration here with the people from the National Art Gallery. My main task tonight is to give you an overview of the so-called Tallinn School of architects, their practices that bridge the fields of art and architecture, and their polemical exhibitions in the 1970s and early 1980s. But to start off, I would like to give you some background information on my own research on this topic.

 

In 2008 I co-curated an exhibition entitled “Environment, Projects, Concepts. Architects of the Tallinn School 1972-1985” together with Mari Laanemets, in which our idea was to show the works of a wider circle of critical architects who were active in Tallinn in the 1970s and 1980s. The setup of the show took into account the design features of the architects’ previous group exhibitions. Together with the show we also produced a book that included an interview with the Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa, a text by Georg Schöllhammer and ourselves, as well as an overview of the Tallinn architects through a set of keywords and a questionnaire that had been given to the participating architects.

 

A follow-up to that project was an exhibition in 2011 that extended the research on the 1970s to a geographically broader territory, including other Baltic countries and Russia. As some of you might know, the show “Our Metamorphic Futures. Design, Technical Aesthetics and Experimental Architecture in the Soviet Union 1960-1980” first took place here in this same building and ran from December 2011 to February 2012. The same show was later exhibited in the Museum of Applied Art and Design in Tallinn.

 

With this show our aim was to break up the traditional research of the past decades that usually remains inside the borders of one national culture, and investigate instead the connections and exchange of ideas between the countries. What happens when we juxtapose, for example, the projects from the Baltic countries or Russia? How would they work next to each other? What kind of new meanings are generated in this way? How could traditional national canons be upset? So, here you can see some of the works of the Tallinn School architects next to architects from Moscow or next to Latvian and Lithuanian architects and designers. A nice example of this juxtaposition is the works by the famous Russian duo Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid next to Estonian pop artist Kaarel Kurismaa and his kinetic objects. The whole section, in turn, forms a kind of comment on the design discourse in the Soviet Union and also could be seen as a way to reinterpret the works themselves, which usually have been considered in the context of the so-called unofficial art. This exhibition took place in parallel with the show “Modernization”, which attempted a similar investigation on the level of design and applied art objects in the Baltic countries.

 

But let’s turn now to the Tallinn School and its exhibitions in the 1970s. In 1978, in the foyer of the Academy of Sciences library in Tallinn a group of 14 architects had a show called “Architecture Exhibition 78.” This was consciously a very laconic title, referring to the official language of the day, and the annual survey exhibitions organized by the Union of Architects. But this time the exhibition was rather different from the standard survey and more a conceptual intervention in the professional field of architecture. In this photograph you can see the group of architects themselves, standing in front of the building where the show took place. The leading members of the group were Leonhard Lapin, Jüri Okas, Vilen Künnapu, others included Ain Padrik, Ülevi Eljand, Toomas Rein, Tiit Kaljundi, Jaan Ollik, Tõnis Vint, Harry Šein and Avo-Himm Looveer. Veljo Kaasik is missing from the image; together with Toomas Rein they belonged to a little older generation, but had joined up with the “young and angry ones” and showed their support. Others were more or less of the same age; they had graduated from the Architecture Department of the State Art Institute in the early 1970s and had gone on from there to work in the Collective Farm Design office KEK. The activity of this group of friends however had already started during their studies: Vilen Künnapu studied together with Leonhard Lapin in the same year, resulting in an important dialogue between them. Jüri Okas was a bit younger but was closely allied to Lapin during his studies. Later Okas and Ollik formed a creative partnership in the mid 1970s.

 

[fig. ALF04_KURG_TA] Architectural exhibition at the Estonian Academy of Sciences Library in Tallinn, 1978

 

The site of the exhibition in 1978 was also significant: the building of the Academy of Sciences Library was from the 1960s, one of the early modernist structures after de-Stalinization. It had a huge foyer which everybody who went to the reading room had to pass. So the place itself already guaranteed a significant number of visitors. Secondly, the building had a long panoramic window that opened on to the street; the interior was visible and very open in character. And finally, the library was located almost opposite the building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Estonian SSR, across the square with a statue of Lenin.

Formally, the architecture show employed standard display boards, one by one metre in size, however the images represented were quite unexpected. It started with a text piece by Leonhard Lapin, called A Concept of Invisible Architecture and A Concept of Spontaneous Architecture. It said that “spontaneous architecture is a free art” and that simply “by moving in space you create architecture”. These statements were unusual in a context of where architecture was understood as something material, tangible: panels and concrete. On the other end of the row of display boards stood another work by Lapin, produced under the name of Albert Trapeež, entitled “Architectural Styles in 20th century Estonia”. This presented the wedding photos of some of the participating architects, categorized under different 20^th century styles: Art Nouveau, functionalism, art deco and something called “bourgeois representative style” – a bureaucratic way of explaining modernism with neoclassical features. So it’s a kind of self-referential and somewhat ironic gesture, but even more importantly, a whole new way of speaking about architecture, that goes very far from the modernist and Socialist mainstream.

 

Some of the general ideas behind the show have retrospectively been highlighted by Leonhard Lapin, who said:

 

“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.”

 

This is a revealing statement, on the one hand side architecture was considered an independent form of art, engaging the “spiritual”, on the other it was seen as influencing social processes; there is the dichotomy of autonomy vs engagement. I think this describes well the dilemmas of this group of architects and their work. Engagement had been devalued by the official Soviet ideology which had turned it into a bureaucratic slogan, which in turn had no relationship to the everyday practice. So, on the one hand they had to claim autonomy from the official building practice, but at the same time show that architecture is not only the alienated standardized building process but also part of a broader environment that influences daily life.

 

When we trace back these ideas of the exhibition then we could start with a document called the “Programme for an Exhibition of New Architecture”, written in 1972 and signed by Tiit Kaljundi, Veljo Kaasik, Leonhard Lapin, Avo-Himm Looveer, and Ülevi Eljand. At that point, several of the signatories had just graduated from the Art Institute. The manifesto said “In architecture everything is permissible” and then further, “The aims of the exhibition are 1. to free architecture from local dogma; 2. to cultivate the formal possibilities of architecture”. And then quite surprisingly they speak about the exhibition itself: “The common feature of the various authors’ contributions will be the height of the exhibited drawings – 80cm, the width of their drawings will be determined by each individual author”. And finally: “Let contemporary architecture represent a new democracy”! So, in some sense here already is made manifest this desire to see architecture as something that plays part in political processes, understood in the most widest of senses. This proposed exhibition did not happen in 1972; it was only in 1978 when these architects were finally able to make the kind of exhibition that reflected the spirit of this manifesto.

 

As I mentioned before, the group of friends and colleagues who had studied together at the State Art Institute went after their graduation to work for the Collective Farm Construction design office “EKE Projekt”. It was a cooperative enterprise rather than a state one, and thus it had a much better control over its resources. It was also known for its much more liberal atmosphere, so it was popular among the younger generation and what was more important – it had a client who was really interested in commissioning architecture that would look different from the average Soviet building production. It is also worth pointing out the situation in Estonia at that time, and I think this might apply to other Baltic countries as well, in that there was a considerable difference in prosperity between town and country, where the countryside was wealthier than towns. This meant that they had more resources also to spend and redirect into their own buildings and welfare.

 

There are several significant buildings by these architects from the early 1970s, especially by Toomas Rein, that were produced for the collective farms. One of them is the housing in Pärnu, the almost 1km long “Golden Home”, together with the administration and industrial production of the Pärnu collective farm construction office. (Rein has mentioned that an initial suggestion for the name of the housing was “Commune”, but the inhabitants disliked it). Rein invited his friends and colleagues to contribute to the project, so Leonhard Lapin designed concrete architectonic signs in front of the entrances to the Golden Home. These remind one of minimalist sculptures and were meant to be in different colours with the rough concrete work painted over. In reality not all of them were carried out.

The collective farm is located on the outskirts of the coastal town of Pärnu. On the one side of the street is housing and workplaces are on the other side. The road in between is the one that goes from Pärnu to Rīga. There is wood workshop with quite an unusual roof structure and supergraphic signage on the exterior wall. On the other side, the playground of the kindergarten was designed by Sirje Runge, using unusual abstract features for the playground elements. The boldly colourful interior design of the kindergarten and the whole housing area was done by the interior architects Helle and Taevo Gans.

 

Another well-publicized building from this period was the Collective Farm Centre in Rapla, also by Toomas Rein. You will recognize the kind of retouched colours that the Soviet period photography used. And here is an early work by Vilen Künnapu ‒ it was a sanatorium in Pärnu, this was a competition inside the KEK design office, and Künnapu won it. Later Jüri Okas and Harry Šein collaborated on the project and Okas also drafted this exhibition panel from 1976, from the Monumental Art Exhibition, which was co-curated by Lapin. I think this panel and the building are remarkable in the way they reference the Russian avant-garde of the 1920s, really taking its aesthetics from El Lissitzky. The building was part of the sanatorium complex which belonged to the collective farms and was operated by their trade unions. The system was that employees working in the collective farms in the countryside could get places in the sanatoriums there. Pärnu has several of them from different periods and architectural styles.

 

Another significant competition which brought this group of architects together was the proposal for the Olympic Yachting Centre in Tallinn in 1974. This was meant for the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980, the yachting competition of which was held in Tallinn. The competition was held in several stages; Avo-Himm Looveer and Kristin-Mari Looveer (one of the couples on the Architectural Styles display board) led the team who won the first round, but also Lapin, Tiit Kaljundi and Jüri Okas were in their team. The competition and its aftermath turned into a confrontation between the older generation and the younger ones; established architects were surprised and suspicious, doubting also the professional skills of the winners. Finally the team was reorganized, more experienced members from the Eesti Projekt design office were included and Lapin and Kaljundi resigned from the group saying that if it saves the project then they will leave. Finally there was a compromise between Avo-Himm Looveer, who made one part of the building and other architects who made the living quarters for the sportsmen.

 

What I think is important to emphasize here, is that in many of these buildings we find implicit the critical ideas that were part of the 1978 exhibition. Harry Šein has described the design principles of his period, saying that their aim was to replace the “functionalism of machine-logic” with “human-faced populism”. Further he says that it is important to move towards “a certain objective and dynamic regulation of the environment instead of the previous thinking that endeavoured final and static order”, that buildings should be able to accommodate future changes, be flexible and user-orientated. They should be ready to adapt to the unexpected. And he ends with an interesting statement, saying:

 

“The dwellers feel every day their inability neither to participate in the design of the living environment nor to manipulate it during use. The more complete is the habitation when we move into it, the more we uphold the initial prohibitions and taboos, the less it will be a home for us… We can survive without people’s architects, more important that people themselves could be architects.”

 

“People’s architect” was an honourable name given to important Soviet architects, he juxtaposes it to the user’s potential to intervene in the building him or herself, really undermining the authority of the architect, which is rather unusual for that time.

 

Also, if we look at the other members of the Tallinn School and to their later statements, then these go against these proposed ideas as well, emphasizing the individuality of the architect’s handwriting and architecture as art. So, what I think is important to realize is that the Tallinn School was really a mix of diverse standpoints and approaches, but also that these existed in parallel and were used simultaneously at the time. Šein’s writings give us a rather different idea of what the critique of Soviet mass construction was about.

 

[fig. ALF04_KURG_2_shein_hills] Harry Šein, Hills I-II (Mustamäe, Õismäe), 1978, exhibition display, photomontage

 

In 1978 Šein showed a display board that was a collage image of the new prefabricated housing areas ‒ the new towns around the historical centre of Tallinn. He showed all four new areas that were built by that time: Mustamäe, Õismäe, Keldrimäe, Lasnamäe. Some images look like an aftermath of a riot (perhaps reminiscent of something like Paris ’68); here an image shows a corpse and a broken car in Mustamäe (Tallinn’s version of Lazdynai). Õismäe, a circular area, is likened here to a Colosseum; the image of Keldrimäe refers to the central market that is located there and Lasnamäe, with a broad central highway cut into the limestone, is shown here like a shopping arcade.

 

An important part of the criticism of mass construction was dealing with the ways of how to integrate these areas into everyday life practices. Here, Tiit Kaljundi’s project, called View of the New Visual Environment, is quite unusual. He proposed three different versions for adapting the environment of the new housing areas: the first was growing crops in the courtyards in between the panel houses – the empty spots that were used for car parking have been turned into decorative fields with the aim of bringing the countryside to the city, and as the architect put it himself, to remind the urban dwellers of the natural life cycles. We could think here also of a comment on the Soviet dictum of erasing the difference between the town and the country. Another proposal by Kaljundi was the idea to turn the slag heaps in the mining areas to centres for downhill skiing and other winter sports. These are huge mountains of leftovers from mining oil shale in North-Eastern Estonia and as a matter of fact, today some of them have indeed become places for extreme sports and also skiing in the winter. Thirdly, Kaljundi proposed raising the “self-consciousness” of small single-family dwellings that had been left between large panel houses in the new suburbs, using for this ephemeral architectural features, weathervanes etc.

 

[fig. ALF04_KURG_1_elavate-surnute] Leonhard Lapin, The city of the living – the city of the dead, 1978, exhibition display, gouache on cardboard, Museum of Estonian Architecture

 

Along similar lines, dealing with the territories between panel houses, Leonhard Lapin’s “City of the Living, City of the Dead” two years later, proposed inserting a cemetery to a public courtyard in one of the prefabricated residential districts. Lapin suggested reconstructing garages to function as tombs and bodies to be buried in cars, whereas the grave monuments could also have functioned as playground elements for children. (“In this way, people would take better care of the area and parents would not allow their children to vandalize its equipment”, as one reviewer mockingly put it.¹) This grotesque scene ironized on the idea of a new town micro-district which had to provide everything useful for daily life. As Lapin himself put it, this addition would enable the area to be self-sufficient and the “inhabitants [would] be able to remain in their neighbourhoods forever without ever needing to cross a single thoroughfare”.² Based on a view from Lapin’s and his then-wife Sirje Runge’s living-room window, the cemetery project referred to several members of the architectural establishment who had been buried under the gravestones in the courtyard; in a further corner was even a common grave of the Architects’ Union. In this way it also commented on the changed circumstances of architects’ work, where in the context of mass produced dwellings the role of the architect had faded away, leaving him or her to follow obediently the numerous restrictive building laws and regulations.

 

This was a project that in the exhibition in the Academy of Sciences library caused most excitement as well as fuss: the obelisk in the centre of the image referred directly to the long-time head of the Union of Architects, saying that he was to die in 1979 (that was a year after the exhibition). What in fact happened was that the head of the union was voted down a year later in the congress of the Architects’ Union, so it was in fact prophetic. I will come back to this congress at the end of my talk.

 

You should also pay attention to the car here, on its hood are the initials V.K., referring to Vilen Künnapu. This refers to Lapin’s idea of people being buried in cars, it was a reference to the growing consumerism and fascination with private cars, but also Künnapu was the first among this circle of architects to own a car. Another significant work by Lapin was the New Skyline of Tallinn, a project which foresaw future Tallinn as a city of skyscrapers. Several of them refer to the Russian avant-garde of the 1920s and Suprematism in particular, as Lapin was in that period also fascinated with Kazimir Malevich.

 

What I wanted also to point out here is this particular relationship to technology and progress: in these projects, and in his statements at the time, Lapin did not turn directly away from supporting new technologies, mechanization and industrialization. Quite the opposite, in some places he actually says that mechanization and automatization had not gone far enough, that the problem was not so much in technology but in its insufficient use. These rather untypical standpoints are also supported by several of his projects for the so-called houses-machines. Also Künnapu drew similar works at the time, often framing them as collage images, as in this work “A House above Manhattan”, an image of a house flying above the skyscrapers.

 

In the same series of representations is Ain Padrik’s “Exhibitionist structure”, an office building for the collective farm “Western Fisherman”. This is an axonometric drawing which has been made from a bottom-up perspective, showing a house which has been as if torn off from the ground with all its posts, pipes and beams, revealing a kind of hidden architecture that you see from underneath.

 

Another important topic related to the Tallinn School’s history is the influence of the American postmodernist architect Robert Venturi. One of the earliest cases when his name was mentioned was in 1973 in an article by Vilen Künnapu in the cultural newspaper Sirp ja Vasar. One year later, Venturi’s influence appears in a project by Veljo Kaasik, of a template sauna – a type project where a different façade is supposed to be added in different architectural context. Thus, next to a manor house you would have a historical façade; the project shows also how in an area with greenhouses, the sauna has a façade shaped like a greenhouse or in Tartu, where there is an area called Soup City, you would have a façade which looks like a soup bowl. So this is the Venturi’s principle of the decorated shed transpositioned to the Soviet context where the standard projects were seen as anonymous and alienating.

 

Kaasik reflected on this topic of transporting Venturi’s ideas into the Soviet context in writing. In 1979 he wrote an article “What to Think of Venturi?” questioning the ways his design principles would work in an entirely different political and economic context. The article was in the samizdat publications of architects. He himself designed a building along the lines of Venturi, a single-family dwelling for his brother who was an engineer. A public building with an interest in double façades and design principles from American postmodernism was Vilen Kunnapu’s project of a flower shop in the old city: there is a white box that includes the building’s programme and a separate concrete façade that contextualizes it with the old town historical features.

 

[fig. ALF04_KURG_okas] Jüri Okas, Paide petrol station, 1982

 

A third kind of example on the influence of Venturi’s ideas could be detected in a series of photographs taken by Jüri Okas, which he titled the Concise Dictionary of Modern Architecture. He was interested in the seemingly “ugly and ordinary” architecture, leftovers and ruins of modernization but also self-evolving and vernacular structures that could work as models for his own design work as an architect. So we could say that for Okas what represented modern architecture were the anonymously generated, the “erroneous” and banal rather than buildings by famous architects. Okas’s dictionary was published next to Kaasik’s article about Venturi in the Estonian architecture review Ehituskunst in 1982. In the same magazine Okas had also written a short text on his building for the Paide KEK Construction Company, a petrol station by the Tallinn-Tartu road which carried some features of Venturi’s approach: an idea of a double façade standing independently from the functional structure. He introduces the building however in a very idiosyncratic manner:

 

“On the roadside are buildings that are completed, buildings that are under completion, decaying buildings, piles of gravel, piles of building panels, heaps of snow, heaps of hay, transformers, chimneys, telephone post, kilometre posts, drains, ploughed fields, unploughed fields, hills, pastures... From 1977-1980 another object was put up on the side of the Tallinn-Tartu road, a six metre high “decaying” wall. On the walls were written Paide KEK and behind it is the petrol station of the Paide KEK”.

 

So it shows how architecture had become another object added to all the previous ones, not organizing the environment but just contributing to the overall entropic growth.

 

As I mentioned before, a turning point in the history of the Tallinn School was the 12^th Congress of the Estonian Architects’ Union in 1979; we could see several of its discussions were influenced by the critique voiced in the exhibition that had taken place one year before. The head of the Union, Mart Port (the one “buried” under one of the obelisks on Lapin’s drawing) addressed the new generation rather directly in his opening speech. He said:

 

“according to psychologists, frustration with work appears among these averagely-abled people who have suggested themselves that they are very talented but are pressed down on purpose…that is most probably the cause of single cases of physical and mental self-exposure among young architects”.

 

We could probably understand the reference to self-exposure being related to the work of the architects’ wedding photographs, displayed at the exhibition, which broke out from the canons of what was generally considered to be an architectural show. Yet, as already mentioned, instead of finding support in suppressing the “young and angry ones” as they were called, Port himself had to leave the post which he had held for 24 years and a new head and board stepped to the front. The vice head of the union included now Toomas Rein, and another member of the group, Tiit Kaljundi became the leader of the union’s youth section. So, oppositional architects now became institutionalized, taking over the Architects Union that they had so far criticized. Their position could perhaps be understood from the point of view of how Tiit Kaljundi explained it in 2007: “we intended to utilize every legal opportunity to make changes rather than to stand as dissidents ‒ as a wrestler has to be in direct contact with his opponents”.

 

[fig. ALF04_KURG_looveer2] Avo-Himm Looveer, Autumn storm in architecture, 1982, watercolor

 

I want to draw this talk to a close by showing the second exhibition of the group (now consisting of only 10 members), at the “Tallinn Art Salon” in 1982-83. This was rather different in character, compared to the openly critical exhibition in 1978. First of all, it took place in a closed art salon space in the Art Hall building, not in the open foyer as in the Academy of Sciences building. This closed character was even more underlined by the window covers designed by Jüri Okas: pink and light blue broken grid-like structures, in accordance to the changed fashion in architecture. So unlike the previous show, the exhibition was not seen from the street. Also the character of the drawings had changed; instead of the direct political opposition, more careful drawings and watercolours were presented. And most importantly, the framework for the architects to act in transforming the environment seems to have changed, at least in some of the works. Avo-Himm Looveer’s watercolour called “Autumn storm in architecture” showed how panel house areas are gradually drowning in the water. It was nature which had taken over, rather than architects’ interventions like burial grounds or agrarian parks, which still aimed to integrate the modernist city and inject new life into it. Now the new town was drowned and no proposals were given as to what would come instead.

 

I would like to stop almost in the same way as I started: here is the group of architects standing in the building of the Art Hall in 1982, ten members now instead of fourteen, representing a withdrawal from the directly interventionist and political attitudes to an interest in the discipline’s own conventions and means of representation. Thank you.

 

 

Iš pradžių aš ruošiausi kalbėti apie Baltijos šalių architektų ryšius su Vakarais, bet kai pamačiau, kad šių paskaitų auditorija yra tokia jauna, supratau, kad būtų labai svarbu Lietuvos studentams pristatyti nuostabios latvių architektės Martos Stanjos (Marta Staņa) gyvenimą ir kūrybą. Pirmiausia trumpai norėčiau papasakoti, kaip aš pati ją atradau.

2001 metais gyvenau Londone ir Barbikano galerijoje teko aplankyti dizainerių Lucienne ir Robino Day retrospektyvinę parodą. Mane visiškai užbūrė jų dizainas. Apskritai tuo metu Britanijoje buvo pradedamas atrasti ir pripažinti pokario paveldas. Buvo nemažai diskutuojama apie Festivalio rūmus (1951), Centre Point dangoraižį (1966) ir brutalizmo architektūrą. Daugelis svarbių to laikotarpio pastatų pradėti iš naujo vertinti, jiems suteiktas kultūros paveldo objekto statusas. Kai grįžau namo į Rygą, pradėjau daugiau domėtis ir daugiau rašyti apie moderniąją Latvijos architektūrą. Ėmiau interviu iš vieno Latvijos architekto, gyvenančio Australijoje, mes daug kalbėjome apie Latvijos architektūros paveldą ir jis paklausė: „Kodėl visi taip domisi art nouveau / secesine architektūra?“ Iš tiesų, tuo metu Latvijoje buvo labai domimasi art nouveau ir art deco stiliais, palikimu, jis tapo turistų traukos objektu ir pan. „Kodėl jūs nesidomite pokarine architektūra, kodėl nekalbate apie Martą Stanją – ji suprojektavo tokius įdomius namus ir teatrą Rygoje?“ – klausė mano pašnekovas. Paradoksalu – aš pati studijavau architektūrą Rygoje, bet nebuvau girdėjusi apie Martą Stanją, apie ją niekas nekalbėjo.

 

Eksperimentinis gyvenamasis namas Rygoje (1967), 2010 m. nuotr., iliustracija iš I. Zibartės pranešimo Architektūros [pokalbių] fondo paskaitoje, 2013 m.

Pažvelgus į dabartinę Martos Stanjos suprojektuoto eksperimentinio namo būklę, tikrai sunku būtų paaiškinti, kuo jis vertingas, kodėl ir ką čia reikėtų išsaugoti, kuo jis apskritai yra įdomus. Dabar jis apleistas ir taip skiriasi nuo to, koks buvo suprojektuotas ir pastatytas 1967 metais. Jaučiu, kad ir Lietuvoje pasitaiko nemažai tokių atvejų. Taigi, tokia buvo pradžia, taip aš atradau Martą Stanją. Savo pirmą straipsnį apie ją parašiau 2003 metais – lygiai prieš dešimt metų. Tada jai būtų buvę 90 metų, ji mirė 1972-aisiais. Taip aš pradėjau savo tyrimą – tai nebuvo akademinis ar mokslinis tyrimas – aš pradėjau kaip žurnalistė. Tai buvo tiriamoji žurnalistika – paremta tyrimais ir interviu, taigi nelabai nutolusi nuo akademinių tyrimų pobūdžio. Skaičiau senus žurnalus, rinkau žmonių atsiminimus. Viskas vystėsi ir galiausiai surengiau didelę parodą. Tačiau kai mane pakvietė į šią paskaitą pakalbėti apie Martą Stanją kaip apie disidentę, aš nenorėjau su tuo sutikti, nes niekada jos tokia nelaikiau. Paskui ilgai galvojau šia tema ir nusprendžiau – gerai, pamėginsiu papasakoti apie ją kaip apie disidentę, bet apie labai tylią disidentę.

Taigi, nutariau jums pristatyti dešimt Martos Stanjos disidentiškumo būdų. Pasitikslinau disidentiškumo terminą Collins English žodyne. Čia rašoma, jog disidentas yra asmuo, kuris nesutinka su vyriausybine pozicija. Kažkuria prasme tą galima įžvelgti Martos Stanjos veikloje, jos darbuose, nors ji niekada nėra viešai šiais klausimais pasisakiusi.

 

Viešbutis „Ryga“, konkursinis projektas, maketas, 1948-1949 m., iliustracija iš I. Zibartės pranešimo Architektūros [pokalbių] fondo paskaitoje, 2013 m.

Pirmiausia, be abejonės, tai būtų modernizmas. Dar penktajame dešimtmetyje ji su profesoriumi Ernestu Štālbergu parengė modernistinį konkursinį projektą, o juk žinote, kad 1948–1949 metais stalinistinė estetika architektūroje dar buvo labai stipri. Jų projektas buvo smarkiai sukritikuotas ir nėra net kalbos, kad jis būtų galėjęs laimėti. Penktojo dešimtmečio pabaigoje susibūrė kūrybinis kolektyvas – jauna tamsiaplaukė moteris ir pagyvenęs profesorius – Marta Stanja ir Ernestas Štālbergas, juos siejo tikrai gilus profesinis ryšys.

 

Marta Staņa su Ernestu Štālbergu ir studentais, apie 1948. Nuotr. iš Latvijos architektūros muziejaus

Štālbergas buvo vienintelis po karo likęs Latvijoje prieškario modernizmo meistras, jis dėstė studentams ir vadovavo jų darbams. Dar 1935 metais jis buvo Laisvės paminklo Rygoje architektas. Taigi jis vienintelis liko, neemigravo ir nebuvo ištremtas į Sibirą, ir toliau dirbo Latvijos universitete, o Marta Stanja tapo jo asistente. Tad jos modernizmas buvo glaudžiai susijęs su Štālbergo architektūros mokykla. Deja, penktojo dešimtmečio pabaigoje po politinio valymo jiems teko palikti universitetą. Štālbergas tuo metu jau buvo gana senas ir galėjo išeiti į pensiją, o Stanjai teko ieškoti vietos ir būdo toliau dirbti ir tapti architekte.

 

Vidurinė mokykla Zvejniekciemyje, Maijos Rudovskos nuotr., 2010 m.

Kita jos disidentiškumo forma būtų holistinis požiūris. Šeštojo dešimtmečio pabaigoje ji suprojektavo labai įdomią mokyklą, ji veikia iki šiol. Tiesa, šiuo metu vykdoma Europinė energinio efektyvumo programa – mokyklą apšiltino, tačiau ir tai iš esmės nesugadino originalaus vaizdo. Mokykla buvo pastatyta dar prieš prasidedant standartinių mokyklų bangai. Stanjos projektą galima pavadinti šveicariška-suomiška architektūra, nes kiekviena klasė turi savo atskirą įėjimą iš lauko, yra natūraliai apšviečiama, taigi yra labai susieta su gamta. Puikus projektas – jis pasižymi tokiomis savybėmis – grynas oras, sveikas pastatas ir pan., apie kurias kalbama dabar. Vėliau ji dar suprojektavo priestatą su plaukimo baseinu, tačiau jis niekada nebuvo pastatytas. Tuo metu Latvijoje tikrai niekas neprojektavo taip, kaip ji.

Dar viena disidentiškumo forma laikyčiau nacionalizmą. Toks, sakyčiau, labai ornamentinis nacionalizmas. Ji draugavo su meistrais, amatininkais (arba liaudies meistrais, kaip juos vadino sovietiniais laikais), kurie audė tekstilės gaminius su latviškais ornamentais. Ji draugavo su tekstilininke Erna Rubene, jos abi kūrė baldų kolekcijas, panaudodamos nemažai latviškų liaudies meno elementų. Marta Stanja tikrai nemažai jų sukūrė.

 

Modernas meno galerija Uzvaros parke, 1967 m., iliustracija iš I. Zibartės pranešimo Architektūros [pokalbių] fondo paskaitoje, 2013 m.

Dar viena disidentiškumo forma būtų skaidrumas, kad ir ką tai reikštų – palieku tai jūsų kontempliacijai. Žymiausias jos projektas Rygoje, be abejo, buvo Dailes teatras – labai įdomus projektas. 1959 metais buvo surengtas šio teatro projektų konkursas ir Marta Stanja netikėtai jį laimėjo, už nugaros palikusi nemažai pripažintų architektų. Nors pats konkursas nebuvo labai lengvas – pirmosios vietos apskritai niekam neskyrė, o Stanja laimėjo antrąją. Pagrindinis elementas jos projekte buvo skaidri, visiškai perregima stiklo fojė. Tas jos skaidrumas buvo toks naivus, nes tais laikais niekas nebuvo skaidru. Žmonės rinkdavosi už uždarų durų, pusiau slapčia, virtuvėse ir tyliai kalbėdavo apie savo gyvenimus. O ji pasiūlė labai atvirą architektūrą. Panašiai ji suprojektavo ir kitą objektą – Dailės galeriją Uzvaros parke, kuri sudaryta iš atskirų permatomų tūrių, skirtų skirtingoms funkcijoms.

 

Dailes teatro fojė, piešinys, 1964 m., iliustracija iš I. Zibartės pranešimo Architektūros [pokalbių] fondo paskaitoje, 2013 m.

Penktuoju jos disidentiškumo būdu laikyčiau tikėjimą neįmanomu. Pavyzdžiui, projektuodama tą patį Dailes teatrą, toje pačioje permatomoje fojė Marta Stanja nupiešė išsipuošusias moteris. Bet įsivaizduokite, kur sovietiniais laikais taip išsipuošusios moterys galėjo eiti? Bet Stanja nuolat kūrė tokias vietas – jos atrodo neįmanomos, todėl aš laikau tai savotišku disidentiškumu. Ji taip pat projektavo ir parduotuvių vitrinas, ji buvo puiki piešėja ir apskritai menininkė. Tuose savo piešiniuose ji vaizdavo prašmatnų gyvenimą, kurio čia nebuvo, – žmones, buriuojančius jachtomis ir vilkinčius puikiais rūbais. 

 

Grįžtant prie architektūros – ji visada buvo truputį drąsesnė už kitus, ir tai aš taip pat laikyčiau disidentiškumo požymiu. Nors sovietinės statybinių medžiagų ir technologijų galimybės ar kokybė beveik niekada neprilygo jos pasiūlytoms idėjoms, ji vis tiek siūlė sprendimus, kurių buvo beveik neįmanoma įgyvendinti. Pavyzdžiui, ji suprojektavo kraštovaizdžio apžvalgos bokštą ant aukščiausios Latvijoje Gaizinkalnio kalvos. Vis dėlto vėliau jai teko supaprastinti savo projektą ir tik antrasis variantas buvo pastatytas devintajame dešimtmetyje, jau po jos mirties (gaila, bet šiemet šis bokštas buvo nugriautas).

 

Nacionalinio teatro Budapešte konkursinis projektas, 1965 m., iliustracija iš I. Zibartės pranešimo Architektūros [pokalbių] fondo paskaitoje, 2013 m.

Dar vienas pavyzdys, kur Marta Stanja pademonstravo savo avangardinį požiūrį lyginant netgi su Vakarų architektais, buvo konkursinis projektas Budapešto nacionaliniam teatrui. Konkursas vyko dar modernizmo klestėjimo laikais, bet savo projekte ji pasiūlė tokias dekonstruktyvias formas, kurios įprastai pasirodo tik vėlyvuoju sovietmečiu ar postmodernizmo laikotarpiu, ar net šių dienų moterų architekčių projektuose.

Manyčiau, kad dar viena įdomi ir svarbi Martos Stanjos disidentiškumo forma buvo ištikimybė profesijai. Ji buvo visiškai atsidavusi savo profesijai ir labai lojali savo kolegoms ir draugams. Ji be atlygio padėdavo kolegoms ir studentams, skatino ir užtarė savo bendradarbius, yra suprojektavusi jiems vasarnamių. Vienas pavyzdys gal nėra toks linksmas, bet ji projektavo ir antkapius savo draugams.

Paprovokuodama pasakysiu, kad ir skaičius laikau vienu iš jos disidentiškumo bruožų. Dalyvaudama konkursuose Marta Stanja savo projektus visuomet pasirašydavo skaičių slapyvardžiais, pavyzdžiui 12345, 555 ar 111 (dalyvaujant konkurse negalima rašyti savo vardo, tik slapyvardį). Kiti architektai pasirinkdavo žodinius variantus, neretai visokius socialistinius simbolius, pavyzdžiui, „raudonasis kubas“ ar „liepsna“. Ji laimėjo teatro konkursą su projektu, pasirašytu „111“. Šį dalyką aš pasitelkiau parodoje 2010 metais – tuos skaičius panaudojau parodos dizaine – ji ir jos skaičiai. Beje, ji nepaliko jokių užrašų, laiškų ar dienoraščių ir nežinome, kodėl ji pasirinkdavo tuos skaičius, bet tai akivaizdu visuose projektuose.

Feminizmas – tai dar viena tema, į kurią norėčiau atkreipti dėmesį. Nesakyčiau, kad nuo pat pradžių ji buvo sąmoninga feministė. Vienoje nuotraukoje ji yra užfiksuota su Andriu Holtsmaniu prieš pat studijų pabaigą, tačiau jie nebuvo pora – tiesiog studijų draugai. Ir jos asmeninis gyvenimas klostėsi gana nuosekliai – ji nebuvo ištekėjusi ir niekada neturėjo vaikų, o vėliau labai artimai bendravo su moterimis iš meno pasaulio. Pavyzdžiui, su jau minėta Erna Rubene ‒ mes konkrečiai nežinome, kaip Marta Stanja apibūdino tą situaciją, tačiau Rubenė irgi niekada nebuvo ištekėjusi ir neturėjo vaikų. Erna Rubenė paliko nemažai užrašų, kuriuose atsispindi jos pažiūros, ir galima tik daryti prielaidas, kad Martos Stanjos pažiūros buvo panašios, todėl kad jos praleido drauge tikrai daug laiko kalbėdamos apie šiuos dalykus. Erna Rubenė kartą labai piktai atsiliepė apie žinutę spaudoje, kurioje senmergės (būtent šis žodis) buvo laikomos blogais visuomenės nariais, kadangi neturi vaikų. Savo atsiliepime ji rašo, kad tokie žmonės yra labai svarbūs, nes daug laiko skiria jaunimo švietimui, mokymui, darbui su studentais ir būsimųjų kartų rengimui.

Taigi, asmeniniai pasirinkimai taip pat buvo jos disidentiškumo būdas. Marta Stanja gyveno su savo seserimis, kurios taip pat buvo netekėjusios ir neturėjo vaikų, o mirė ji nuo vėžio. Ji niekada nebuvo komunistų partijos narė, netgi nekalbėjo rusiškai. Kiekvieną kartą, kai aš kalbu apie ją, manęs klausia – bet kaipgi ji galėjo kurti tokius projektus, kaip ji žinojo, kas vyksta anapus geležinės uždangos, ir kaip ji sugebėjo sugalvoti tokius avangardinius projektus netgi lyginant su Vakarų architektais? Bet architektai iš Baltijos respublikų galėjo – jie žinojo. Jie daug keliavo, grupėmis ir pavieniui, jie skaitė užsienio architektūros žurnalus, jie lankėsi parodose, jie rengė diskusijas, jie žiūrėjo užsienietiškus filmus, jie rašė laiškus, jie klausė radijo, jie turėjo puikius mokytojus, jie turėjo žinių ir jie palaikė ryšius. Bet yra dar daugybė istorijų ir faktų, kuriuos norėčiau atskleisti apie tai ir apie Martą Stanją.

Thank you for inviting me here and organising this very nice series. I would like to use the occasion to present some ideas from my ongoing research. I will focus on the period from 1986 to 1991, which is the period between the beginning of perestroika and, in the case of Estonia, the re-establishing of Independence.

If we think about the issue of architecture and dissidence, perhaps this period would not be the first that would come to mind. But it is especially because of this that I am intrigued with what could be a critical position for an architect during these troubling times, when everything was changing very fast, when Soviet rule was crumbling and the whole of society seemingly consolidated towards one goal to re-establish independence. Where is the dissidence when there is no clear opponent or where do you base your critical position on?

The 1960s and 1970s have been quite well researched in Estonian architecture, however one cannot say the same about the 1980s. The same goes for art contexts, where also the 1960s and 1970s have been thoroughly researched with all these concepts of dissidence and official and unofficial art. But the 1980s, especially the second half of it, are much more uncertain. Two years ago a volume of “The Lost 80s” was published. It encompassed issues from painting to graphic design, from photography to performance, but architecture was totally missing from it. This means that the architectural history of the second half of the 1980s remains to be written.

The Soviet period is usually represented in these issues of dissidence by the Tallinn school, which has been thoroughly researched. The 1990s are widely talked about as the new era with a new generation, with new neo-modernist architects who had a very sober and rational attitude. But between these two there is an interesting grouping who has, so far, been almost dismissed from the architectural history because they were especially strong in other fields of art. Here I’m talking about the radical interdisciplinary grouping called Rühm T or GROUP T which was a collective of creative individuals ranging from painters, designers, musicians and a philosopher, but it was the initiative of two architects called Raoul Kurvitz and Urmas Muru. They were notorious in Estonian art history for initiating trans-avantgardist neo-impressionist paintings and by introducing the practice of the very mystical ritualistic, very spectacular performances. They had strong ties to the music scene, with punk rock and later techno. They were also very important for backing up their activities with fresh French post-structuralist philosophy, which was more or less unknown to most of their audience and ultimately all this flamboyance of their activities overshadowed the architecture.

They had this Tallinn school generation ahead of them who by the middle of the 1980s had established themselves quite well and who had made their mark, at some points they even started to try international competitions; so one could say that by the 1980s they were beginning to institutionalize. The Tallinn school’s opposition to Soviet mass housing and the stressing of individuality and their neo-functionalist or postmodernist tendencies seemed, at that point, as perhaps the only way to maintain a resistant position. But the inspirations for GROUP T were very different from the start. They were lured by new tendencies that later came to be amalgamated under the title Deconstructivist architecture. Of course, their architecture was a far cry from the heavy theoretical conceptualisation of Bernard Tschumi or Coop Himmelb(l)au but they took it from the air and their perceived disadvantages as architects who were working in the industrial project, which was widely considered as the least imaginative place to work in the Estonian architectural system, they turned to their advantage and wrote the Manifesto Of Technodelic Expressionalist architecture.

[ALF04_Ruudi_1] Raoul Kurvitz, Urmas Muru, page of Manifesto Of Technodelic Expressionalist architecture, picture from I. Ruudi presentation at Architecture Fund lecture, 2013]

They somehow managed to convince their official industrial project office to publish this leaflet of quite anachronistic architecture, which was not related to the everyday practice of this office at all. The Manifesto of Technodelic Expressionism is a text deliberately full of paradoxes starting from the name which merges technology and psychedelic. The name was explained as a revelation of the technological world in a state of trance. The text called for “completely new architectural sensibility that would combine contemporary technological advances and absolute subjectivity, a juxtaposition of industrial and organic impulses. This kind of architecture must be born from hallucinations and ecstasy, it is an environment for dreams and for realizing one’s hidden passions. Technodelic expressionist designs as if delivering erotic confession. Architectural forms are the residual products of emotions”. This is a passionate manifesto that can, for instance, be compared to Coop Himmelb(l)au’s calls for architecture that must blaze, architecture that must be either cold as ice or flaming as fire.

This was a call for emotionality, corporeity and irrational tendencies in architecture. But at the same time, which was important from my point of view, this also worked as a distorting mirror for the general national romanticist spirit of the end of the 1980s. Quoting again from the manifesto, they called functionalism the national environmental art that most adequately expressed the Estonians’ reserved rationality and conservatism, and they demanded that the same internally directed energy would now be released and hurled in the opposite direction. So they called for a revolution that, in a way, went with the spirit of the times, but at the same time called into question the national environmental design and thereby also the adequacy of the national identity.

[ALF04_Ruudi_2] Travelling exhibition of Estonian private house architecture, exhibition design by Raoul Kurvitz, Urmas Muru, Velle Kadalipp, 1984, picture from I. Ruudi presentation at Architecture Fund lecture, 2013]

This nuance takes us back from the very first manifestation of their ideas, when they were exhibition designers of the individual residential projects’ exhibition in 1984. Building an individual residence was widely accepted as resistant practice ‒ the Tallinn school architects were widely engaged in it, but their exhibition design tried to deconstruct the image and introduced somewhat threatening elements that referred to instability and called it into question.

[ALF04_Ruudi_3] Urmas Muru, Architectural drawings, picture from I. Ruudi presentation at Architecture Fund lecture, 2013]

The majority of their architectural designs came in the form of drawings. There are several things that meet the eye when looking at the drawings of GROUP T. Firstly, of course, their formal references to expressionism and constructivism, but they are not conceived in anticipation of some kind of new utopian world. Although, when Urmas Muru wrote an article explaining the importance of the architectural drawings he made reference to Bruno Taut and Erich Mendelsohn in which he explained drawing as visions ahead of their time, but the actual drawings somehow give the expressionist forms a sinister touch. If they are the visions of architecture yet to come, it clearly means the anticipation of some kind of post-humanist era. Moreover, classically conceptual architectural drawings would hint at some kind of possible space that you can inhabit ‒ space as a container. But it is very hard to imagine that these drawings of Urmas Muru contain some kind of space, they are somehow hollow, they depict only exteriors, never interiors. They also do not hint at any kind of context or environment where these visions of buildings should fit into. Moreover, they are actually not conceptual drawings in a way that we would be tempted to think about, they are not pure visions but more like a presentation technique of their actual projects at the industrial project office. I mean that each of these drawings actually has a correlate as a building design. But they are representing their actual designs in a way that would be remarkably not realist, not having anything to do with the actual three-dimensional Soviet reality.

[ALF04_Ruudi_4] Peeter Pere, Kreenholm ice hockey hall, Narva, 1987, picture from I. Ruudi presentation at Architecture Fund lecture, 2013]

Another of their group ‒ Peeter Pere ‒ went even further in this impulse of detaching drawings from reality. In his visions it is very hard to understand anything about the essence of the actual architectural design. It is quite peculiar that these are often presented as the official part of the design file or presented in very official overviews of the new designs that are to be built. I think that Pere’s drawings and gouache paintings go the furthest in his act of violence against architecture. Why I am talking about violence is very important in this context. It was a recurring theme both in their architecture and their performances and I think these two practices should be viewed together and not separately as they have been viewed thus far. Part of their understanding of violence was in tune with how Tschumi understood violence as a collision of architecture and the human body, violence as a productive category, and violence as a possibility of a change, renewal or a deeply Dionysiac impulse. Also Raoul Kurvitz has said that the goal is to find the way to use the energy of violence most productively. But at the same time it could also be likened to the understanding of Georges Bataille who has also written about violence against architecture. He has likened the role of architecture in a society to that of Lacan’s mirror stage in the development of the person. Creating architecture, in that sense, would constitute a mirror stage for a society ‒ for a social image. Architecture is the authorized superego of a society. Bataille also makes a very strong connection between the social and the bodily presence, and takes the very long Western tradition of equating body and architecture to a logical conclusion.

[ALF04_Ruudi_5] Performance OVAL, 1990, picture from I. Ruudi presentation at Architecture Fund lecture, 2013]

The performance practice of GROUP T illustrates this theme of violence very well. A recurring theme of their heavily symbolic performance practice was balancing on the verge of self-destruction and the search of something inarticulate, often embodied by amorphous matter or archetypes. One of their most recurring working methods was to put themselves constantly under the question as a subject and to put themselves in a position of danger. For instance, Muru played the violin in flames. And there were performances which directly engaged the architectural space – the performance Oval ‒ which created an opposition between rational and irrational impulses. In the performance Peeter Pere was doing architectural work – painstakingly measuring the exact oval form which would correspond to the oval opening of the courtyard above him. From this oval opening a huge plastic sheet which was filled with water fell and later Urmas Muru was struggling inside this sheet, putting himself in a very dangerous situation, but representing the irrational creative impulse which was more productive than the rational activities below. There was also a performance called Eleonora, which also meant the violent clashing of random objects, culminating in a person hanging over a huge black plastic sheet that was swirling on the floor representing the formless or irrational moment.

And perhaps from the performances which most directly engaged architectural space took place in Helsinki in 1992. The performance had Urmas Muru balancing on a balcony rail. All the openings of the façade filled with black matter. His activities were correlated with music ‒ he was somehow conducting the building as this black matter started to pulsate from the façade upwards and then finally burst. It looked as if the building was spitting out some kind of the black matter, it was like a purging of the subconscious or just leaving the building as a hollow core.

[ALF04_Ruudi_6] Urmas Muru, Performance A rebours in Helsinki, 1992, picture from I. Ruudi presentation at Architecture Fund lecture, 2013]

I interpret their activities in performance and architecture as representing the buildings as masks or buildings as hollow beings. I am tempted to associate this with an idea taken from Alexei Yurchak’s recent interpretation of the last decades of Soviet Russia. He has proposed a much more nuanced understanding the situation of the final Soviet decades. He has described that a Soviet person’s relationship towards ideology was dynamic and situated, and seemingly contradictory positions and beliefs could be reconciled within a person’s mind. So it became increasingly important to reproduce the signifiers of the social orders, but behind the signifiers a much more complex system of practices took place. He has termed this reproduction of forms with shifting content as “heteronimical or performative shift”. In his interpretation, during the 1980s the appearance of the Soviet reality worked as a mask, behind it the people of this period were quite comfortably incorporating their heterological everyday practices and points of view. But it is important here that Yurchak says that they were doing it without fully being aware of it. This is also why perestroika succeeded ‒ something that started as just a reform, at one point tore up the system of rules which everybody had been unconsciously following up to that point, at one point it ripped the system out into the open and the society that had been a mask was now visible for everyone. So I think that the architecture and performance of GROUP T was in a way reflecting this area of the lowering of the masks. But at the same time it was also important that their critique was not directed only towards the Soviet system, it was also directed towards the very consolidated and very nationalistic tendencies of the time. For instance, when they proposed the Estonian art museum project, instead of building they chose to dig almost the whole programme inside the ground which would open only as a zigzag wound, the building volume as little as could be seen was more like a clash of rocks. They presented it as a modelling-clay model which was sunk in an aquarium filled with water that you could not actually see through.

In conclusion, these were the manifestations in architecture and performance. By 1991 they had finally arrived at actually voicing their opposition in this way. They published an article in an urban culture magazine MArK and this text was no less a manifesto than the earlier ones. “The policies of the press are pure as abstraction. The mechanics of power are within the people themselves. Power can be realised only in the city and on the streets. Anti-power can also be realised in the city and on the streets. Governments may change and the names of the countries may change. But power can only increase or decrease. Even if the state is overthrown, power is not”. It was written in 1991, it was the year when Estonia’s independence was legally restored. But this text explicitly presented an anarchic challenge to the processes. It also gave a clear expression of space as an agent that maintains social relationships and at the same time underscored the relationship between space and power.

So in the context of this series “Architecture and dissidence”, I am not sure if their activities can be termed dissident because you can only be a dissident if you have a clearly defined opposite side. I regard their activities more like different manifestations or articulations of critical opposition that needs to maintain a critical distance even at times when everybody seems to know the right way to do things.

 

First of all thank you for inviting me. Why Bogdan Bogdanović? I come from Belgrade, some of you may know that Bogdan Bogdanović was a mayor of that city between 1982 and 1986, so a vast majority of the contemporaries does not really believe that he might have been a dissident under the communist regime. This is one of the most interesting aspect of the phenomenon Bogdan Bogdanović – being a dissident without being a dissident. This is what we are going to talk about this evening.

I met Bogdan Bogdanović in 1993, paradoxically not in Belgrade – our hometown – but in Vienna where we both lived in exile. By that time, I had already known a couple of things about him, I had also read some of his books. In these books he mainly concentrated on city planning and was highly interested in all the problems considering the city, he reflected a lot on the metaphysics of the city by examining its position and character in today’s world. Furthermore, he developed a very special kind of poetry of the cities without ceasing to be a scholar.

Gordana Fontana-Giusti who is missing this evening wrote an essay about Bogdan Bogdanović’s book called “The Futile Trowel”. It is a book which appeared first in 1963, in which Bogdanović delivered an imaginative polylogue with the masters from the past like Bernini, Borromini, Guarini, Piranesi and others. I have to emphasize that in his youth Bogdan Bogdanović actually was a surrealist. He attended the second gymnasium in Belgrade in the late 1930s. Many of young people were actually influenced by surrealism. I’m talking of course about Bretonian group, not about Aragonian group which was rather Stalinist. Bogdan Bogdanović however kept considering himself a Trotskyist, which is I think a very important thing to emphasize – also in a context of the later socialist Yugoslavia.

He was born in 1922 into a family of left-wing intellectuals in which the written word was held in high esteem. He actually wanted to become a writer, but not only a writer – at some point he realized that building also meant a creation of some kind of text. His favourite slogan was “I wrote so that I could build and I built so that I could write”. So he never separated those two things from each other and I may also remind of the famous statement by Adolf Loos, according to which a good architecture is the one which can be told about, which can be described. This is something Bogdanović was arguing about in many of his essays.

During the WWII he joined the partisans and became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. He was even more than that: he was a soldier of the Party (as he aptly put it), but still a dissident. It might sound peculiar, but maybe we are going to realize how and why in the course of this lecture.

He completed his studies in 1950. His tutor was Nikola Dobrović, a prominent protagonist of Yugoslavian Modernism who had lived in Prague back in 1920s, who knew Jan Kotěra and a number of his influential contemporaries. After having finished his studies Bogdan was a bit desperate, he did not really know how to turn his ideas into the practice. We must be aware of the fact that he had planned surrealist houses in his youth – houses without doors and windows, houses with stairs which lead nowhere and other weird features partly reminding of Tristan Tzara’s phantasies.

The so-called real life was a harsh thing to deal with. Expectably, the building authorities in socialist Yugoslavia did not grant much leeway for the architects. There were for example only two types of windows allowed. Bogdan got quite desperate with this situation and was soon forced to find a niche within his practice. One of the first projects he worked on was a housing estate near Belgrade called “Jaroslav Černi”. It all happened far away from any big gestures of socialist urbanism. These are not big houses, the settlement looks rather like a Mediterranean village. The window frames were made of concrete, thus contrasting with the rough surface of stone façades. Bogdanović emphasized that those where thought of as windows in Platonic sense. The Windows - they cannot be more “windowish”. Of course, the whole settlement turned out to be completely unpractical. I paid a visit to “Jaroslav Černi” couple of years ago and the people who lived there complained about various disadvantages of their homes. The houses might be suitable for summer holidays, but not for permanent domiciles. Bogdanović was aware of this fact and this is what drew him away from the architectural practice.

„Jaroslav Černi“ Housing Estate, Belgrade (1953). Photo: Ivan Ristić

So what was the niche, what was the big discovery of his life? The monuments. We all know what the monuments are. The monuments are supposed to remind us of historical events and to reveal dark secrets, but they often do exactly the opposite: by telling only one story in only one single symbolical language, they somewhat hide the truth. Bogdan Bogdanović realized that he might express himself in this media of architectural monument by enabling the visitors to read the messages on many different levels. Without creating or modelling some partisans with bombs, without making big late Modernist gestures, he succeeded in transmitting his personal poetry into these monuments which are often urban-amorphous.

He was strongly focused on a drawing as a medium. Typically enough, he drew many of his projects after the execution, however not in order to improve or remodel them, but to make some further reflections on the subjects. So this is how the architecture actually continued in his mind.

Memorial to the Jewish Victims of Fascism, Belgrade (1952). Photo: Ivan Ristić

Memorial to the Jewish Victims of Fascism in Belgrade (1952) was the first monument built by Bogdan Bogdanović. It was commissioned by the Jewish community. There were six or seven competitors, the commissioners however decided to accept Bogdan Bogdanović’s proposal mostly because it contained no ideological signs – there are no stars, hammers or any emblems of that sort. Initially Bogdan wanted to build this monument in reinforced concrete, but the representatives of the Jewish community wouldn’t accept this modern material. They insisted on importance of stone for their religion. In the course of their march to Jordan, each exponent of the Jewish tribe had to bear a stone as an element of the lost arch. This is the symbolical level of architectonical appearances Bogdanović was quite fond of. On the walls which flank the “dromos” (a path leading to the big gate) we notice some remnants of the houses in Belgrade which had been destroyed during the bombardments in the WWII. So they were deployed as spolia (an archaeological term meaning re-use of earlier building material or decorative sculpture by incorporating it in new architectural compositions).

What is the symbolism of the gate? As for Bogdan Bogdanović, it was a gate into a new kind of architecture, a discovery. I also have to draw your attention to the shape itself. You can observe oblique outlines of the core of the monument. The void space formed by the two wings seems to open up against the sky. It is an imaginary drawing defined by Bogdanović as anti-perspective, suggesting a mirroring effect. Some further attempts to interpret these monuments were made as well - wings of Ariel for instance, or the two tablets of Moses. So what I am basically talking about is an “open system”, everybody is allowed to offer his or her own explanation of this model. Bogdan never really postulated any definite formulas about how to read his monuments.

Like many of his contemporaries Bogdan Bogdanović was initially a Corbusean. He partly used the Le Corbusier’s Modulor in order to demonstrate how the monument acts in the space. However he gave up this practice quite soon, in the late 1950s.

The monument itself was vastly ignored by the press, there was but a short article in an architecture magazine published in Ljubljana. Bogdan became and also remained a “respectably ignored” person in the following decades. Therefore he decided to focus on his activities at the University of Belgrade. He worked for the Department for urban development, giving lectures on the history of the city and writing essays. Apart from these activities he saw no chance to deploy his skills. It was not until 1959, when he was commissioned with big projects. Paraphrasing the case of Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach, we might describe the 1960s as the big decade of Bogdan Bogdanović. His most impressive and most important works were made in that period.

Speaking about the Jewish monument I also have to mention few more aspects. Look at these wings again. In some official proposals for the Jewish community they were described as stećci. Stećci ist how the Bogomile gravestones from Bosnia are called. People who created this kind of primitive art in the 15th century were neither Orthodox nor Catholics, they were Heretics similar to the Albigensians in France. They became rather popular with communist ideologists in the Afterwar period. It should have become a Yugoslavian compromise in a certain sense – being neither orthodox nor catholic, i.e. neither Western nor Eastern. I may remind you that Tito had made his break with Stalin in 1948 and that Yugoslavia belonged neither to the Eastern nor to the Western bloc. The “third path" became a trade mark of Yugoslavian ideology and also increasingly popular with cultural activists. The fact that the first monument by Bogdanović had no similarities with “stećci” whatsoever didn’t seem to bother anyone.

Slobodište, Kruševac (1965) The Valley of Tribute. Photo: Ivan Ristić

“Slobodište” in Kruševac, Serbia, was one of the most ambitious projects in the 1960s. “Slobodište” means more or less “freedom site”. It was completed in 1965. If I recall correctly, the first works by land artists like Smithson and others. were made in late 1960s. That would probably mean that Bogdanović invented the Land Art before Land Art and it is quite a unique thing. How did he come to this solution? In the first place, he didn’t find the site particularly motivating, as it was rather flat. Luckily, there was a factory in Kruševac that produced bulldozers. They representatives of this enterprise needed a place where they could try out the machines. Bogdanović got the idea to let them exercise the machines by remodelling the landscape according to his drawings. This is exactly what happened – Bogdanović developed a site consisting of two big valleys, the so-called “Valley of Commemoration” in the upper part, and in the lower part featuring a summer stage. The latter is quite typical for communist planning – if there was a memorial site, some summer stages were often incorporated to the site in order to have some theatre productions performed there. It is really an impressive place of about 180 meters length. In the last planning phase Bogdanović decided to add the stone “wings” which more or less look like remnants of some vanished civilization. Some other details can also be found like, for example, millstones, on which you can read “Bread and freedom are the same thing to us”. This is actually quite a kitschy message. There were some influential personalities who strongly interfered in this concept. I am talking about Dobrica Ćosić, who later became a big Serbian nationalist, who was also a great companion of Tito, and the member of Communist Party, etc.

Once I reminded Bogdanović of the fact that these curves of wings are slightly similar to those considered by William Hogarth a perfect line. Bogdanović said to me: “Well it is possible, I did not know about this curve by Hogarth, but wise people understand each other without even having met each other, this is how it is”. Some years later, in 1974, in Štip, Macedonia, this motive was re-used. Here they appear more elegant and we also recognize some symbols, so it looks quite oriental altogether. It is not by chance he made it in Macedonia, a land in which the old oriental crafts really have a long tradition, as the land was ruled by Ottoman Turks for many centuries. And this is something Bogdanović accepted and embraced in his own sketches and designs. The point was that he respected the original tradition. And that he always tried to create some kind of connection with it. This was the case in Štip.

Soldiers Cemetery, Štip (1974). Photo: Ivan Ristić

His most famous monument, completed in 1966, is the Memorial for the Victims of Concentration Camps in Jasenovac, Northern Croatia. Jasenovac was also called the Auschwitz of the Balkans. In 1941, the so-called Independent State of Croatia was established by Croatian fascists, the Ustaše, who were strongly supported by Adolf Hitler. There was a concentration camp on the site of the former brick works and it developed to the biggest concentration camp in Croatia during the WWII, where tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, gypsies and anti-fascists of different ethnic groups were tortured and eventually killed. Yugoslavian establishment hesitated for a long time before the final decision was made, for the crimes have not been committed by some foreign fascists, Germans or Italians, but by domestic fascists. Therefore it was quite a tricky thing to build such a monument on Croatian soil and Bogdanović proposed a compromise which, as you can see, did not really offend anybody, did not threaten anybody, but also did not hide the truth. This is a lyric monument, you can recognize a big flower. There are various interpretations - some describe the monument as a dome of gothic cathedral or a cosmic tree. Bogdanović, as I already hinted, welcomed all that; we are talking once again about the open system. This “tree” is 26 meters high, made of reinforced concrete. It seems to rise out of water. In this context, it is worth mentioning that Bogdanović at some point tried to classify his own monuments according to the elements. So there is the element of water, there is the element of earth. We saw an element of earth on Kruševac. This kind of spiritual games was quite typical for Bogdanović’ practice.

Memorial to the Victims of Concentration Camps, Jasenovac (1966). Photo: Ivan Ristić

In the course of my work at the Architekturzentrum in Vienna I tried to reconstruct the morphology of each single monument by classifying the drawings of Bogdanović and trying to imagine how they had developed. They look quite different sometimes. In certain cases we are dealing with the element of fire, which is also something extremely important for the aesthetics of Yugoslav politics. The fire was the main motive of Yugoslavian coat of arms. The six pieces were supposed to symbolise six republics of Yugoslavia: Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Slovenia and Croatia. And the unity of all these elements, of course, was designed after a Soviet model. Bogdanović however rather brought it into connection with the libertarian thought of the French revolution. He always found some possibilities of explaining his monuments in a way which did not necessarily correspond to the dictate of the communist discourse, however by being in accordance to the ruling ideology as well.

Coat of arms of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Ivan Ristić

Bogdanović also liked to stress that his monuments were female; in Serbian language the word “monument” is actually masculine. He tended to consider the female a symbol of continuity and rebirth. Making the phenomenon of rebirth a main issue was of some importance, as he dedicated all his monuments to the victims of fascism and to those who were fighting against fascism during the WWII, and this notion of rebirth and eternal youth was also welcomed by the representatives of communist ideology.

There is an exception though. Cenotaphs in Bela Crkva were being considered masculine by Bogdanović.  The site was inaugurated on the 7th of July, 1971, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the uprising of the Serbian communists against German occupation. In terms of choosing the style this matter was also a political one, as in the early 1970s, the Serbian communist party was ruled by the so-called liberal wing. These “liberals” rather had a friendly attitude towards Western democracies, they were anti-Stalinists, actually. But the communists from other parts of Yugoslavia considered them Serbian nationalists. I mention that because some typical motives of Serbian traditional clothes are being used for this monument. The hat called “šajkača” is crowning each of the cenotaphs.

We might also consider this manner a fine example of the so-called Socialist Aestheticism, which is something typical Yugoslavian. The doctrine of the Socialist  Aestheticism was originally formulated by the literature critic Sveta Lukić in the early 1960s, then reformulated by some art critics in the 1970s. Being a progressive alternative to the Socialist Realism, the Socialist Aestheticism allegedly provided freedom in achieving sublime expressions. According to the postulates of Socialist Aestheticism, this very autonomy within the work of art should be the goal of an artist who thought and lived like a socialist individual. However paradoxical it might sound, the aim was actually to set one’s mind free in order to be a better communist. The comfortable aspect of this situation is that you can interpret it in many different ways. Bogdanović also partly embraced the aesthetic of the Soviet model, according to which “a work of art should be national by its shape, but socialist by its content.”

Cult Site for the Fallen Freedom Fighters, Vlasotince (1975). Photo: Ivan Ristić

One more “gate” can be found in Vlasotince, Southern Serbia, built in 1975 and called “Cult Site of the Fallen Freedom Fighters”. It really gets difficult to believe that we are dealing with a monument dedicated to the partisan combatants during the WWII. You can easily recognize that Bogdanović referred to Neolithic art – just look at the carvings on the stones. He always stressed that he felt the most “at home” while researching the Neolithic period, also by consulting Sigfried Giedion’s “The Eternal Present”. Such granite stones are extremely difficult to get carved. The planning process was also a very long one. There are most various sketches proving again how manic Bogdanovć was in terms of searching for a proper formula. There were almost no execution plans. Bogdanović always kept the sketches hidden from his commissioners, in order to be able to develop and re-develop the ideas on and on in his studio. Of course, at some point they had to be realised. He highly appreciated the skills of his stone masons. This archetypal dimension of architecture also played a very important part. On a very abstract level, the monument of Vlasotince is also something like a gate opened towards the sky, it contains a solar symbol. The outlines of a cosmic plant can be recognized as well.

Partisan Necropolis in Mostar in 2009. Photo: Ivan Ristić

Some sites are obviously based on urban-amorphous plans. One of the most radical interventions within the landscape was the Partisan Necropolis in Mostar, Hercegovina. Bogdanović actually created an abbreviature of a town featuring ramparts, gates, towers and narrow Mediterranean streets. The Necropolis is dedicated to 810 antifascists killed during the WWII, all of them from Mostar and its environments. The monument is also being described as Acro-Necropolis, which off course is a syllogism. Bogdan often created new words in a good old surrealist tradition. Acro-Necropolis – the city of the dead – was supposed to get into a dialogue with the city of the living ones. Unfortunately, this monument was severely damaged during the wars in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. In this context, I have to draw your attention to the fact that Mostar is a divided city – divided between Bosnians in one part and the Croats in the other part. The misfortune of this monument was that it was situated on the Croatian side of the city and the Croatian nationalists were basically those who made all these damages. Currently some attempts are being made to reconstruct it. The problem is that stone masons from the 1960s do not live anymore and moreover that the craft as such does not exist. The whole site is crowned by a ziggurat on the top. It is backed by a circle contenting solar symbols. Bogdanović however didn’t take this esoteric symbolism seriously, he rather made fun of it. One more urban-amorphous scheme is “Memorial to the Fallen of the Wars of Independence between 1804 and 1945”, in Knjaževac, Serbia. 1971. In this case Bogdanović referred to the traditional xylography, treating the stone as if it was timber.

Memorial to the Fallen of the Wars of Independence between 1804 – 1945, Knjaževac (1971). Photo: Ivan Ristić

The mythological amphisbaena (a serpent with a head at each end), was one of Bogdanović’ favourite motives. She represents the basic idea of ambiguity as well as continuity.Amphisbaenae also occur on the cenotaphs for the Victims of Fascism in Travnik (Bosnia) which was badly damaged during the war in the 1990s. One might argue that thus they were transformed into remnants of a vanished civilisation, thus representing a self-fulfilling prophecy. At some point Bogdanović got very fascinated by this condition of the monument, so he even made an unofficial proposal to keep the cenotaphs preserved in this condition.

Cenotaphs for the Victims of Fascism, Travnik (1975). Photo: Ivan Ristić

Palimpsests are something I have already hinted to by talking about drawing “post-factum”, drawing afterwards. What I am talking about are many layers of a single drawing – those were made mostly for the Cenotaphs of Vukovar in Croatia.  This is a place on which several dozens of anti-fascists had been executed between 1942 and1945 by the Croatian Ustaša. Vukovar is a city in Croatia which was completely destroyed in the 1990s. The memorial is also in a very bad condition. The drawings made for Vukovar bear testimony that Bogdanović worked in many layers by drawing and redrawing, so it is quite a fluid development. He also developed a metaphor of a sunken city, inspired by Goethe and his visit to Pozzuoli, wherein the prominent German traveller made an analysis of a sunken temple covered by lava stones. This would make an inspiring link to Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty”, one of the most distinguished works of what we call the Land Art. The point is that the “Spiral Jetty” often disappears and re-emerges under the water surface, which depends of meteorological conditions. This is also something which repeatedly happens to the sunken city in Bogdanović’s drawings – on a metaphorical level of course. In the lower part of Dudik Memorial Park we see the so-called “šajke” (boats) referring to the naval tradition on the Danube. As if the boats were leaving the sunken city. Once again Bogdanović developed a very poetical concept.

Dudik Memorial Park, Vukovar (1980). Photo: Ivan Ristić

The very last monument is the Combatants Mausoleum in Popina, Serbia (1981).  You may have noticed that Bogdanović loved the ornament, which was quite unusual attitude for a presumptive modernist. The very last monument did not have any ornaments. Paradoxically it became an ornament in itself, being a sign in the nature. This is something that many contemporaries would not comprehend. Many of the art theorists who had criticized Bogdanović for his ornaments for decades stated after its completion that he at last “came to his senses” by giving up the ornament. Apparently it didn’t come to their minds that it was quite an esoteric matter once again.

Combatant’s Mausoleum, Popina (1981). Photo: Ivan Ristić

So this was an overview more or less, so let’s talk about dissidence in architecture, why he was a dissident.

Ines Weizman: We should not impose this too much, sometimes we might not even know the exact details where dissidence lies in. I imagine the whole point about the secrecy, bringing in only last minute the execution plans, so only the last minute it was decided. Or he was inviting particular craftsmen to treat the stone. So he finally built into the very structures the unexpected. It was also a certain liberty for the stone masons…

Ivan Ristić: It was a refusal of everyday practice, which was probably linked to the socialist building practice in general and we cannot talk about Bogdan Bogdanović as a dissident, but we can talk about the dissidence of Yugoslavia as a whole within the corpus of socialist countries. I consider this a main point, because it was the very society which encouraged him to develop this kind of aesthetics. This would not have been possible without Tito’s famous break with Stalin in 1948, of course. The new socialist society was faced to this challenge of developing a new formula of commemorating the victims of fascism and the partisans.

I. W.: If you look at the work we have seen, there are a lot of archaic gestures, referral to partly esoteric, but also the tradition of primordial forms, objects, figures. How do we define then his modernism?

I. R.: The best definition of Bogdan Bogdanović was given by an architecture critic from Austria, Friedrich Achleitner. He calls Bogdanović an anti-modernist. But in order to become an anti-modernist, you have to go through a modernist phase. This is what Bogdanović really went through in the beginning. So the aim was actually to overcome modernism.

I. W.: Can you project forward a bit? Because you leave now with 1981. I think it is also important for the audience to understand what happens now. It is quite critical [time], because he becomes a mayor of Belgrade. What’s actually happening in the years up to come, until 1993?

I. R.: Bogdanović was a member or even a functionary of the Communist Party. But it is important to stress that Serbian Communist Party consisted of two different groups, two different wings – the neo-Bolshevist wing, you may even call it a neo-Stalinist wing, and the other one, which was liberal and pro-western, which was ready to talk about everything – even about the possibilities of establishing a new political system. It is really important to stress that Bogdanović was representative of this liberal wing of the Communist Party. He was appointed mayor of Belgrade by representatives of this liberal wing. This is a very important part of the explanation. We have to differentiate between communists and communists.

I. W.: How did he appear as an architect politician when he was a mayor?

I. R.: Well, he did try to intervene, to act as an architect. For example, he initiated an international tender for redeveloping and restructuring New Belgrade, which is a huge part of the city planned by socialist economy in the post-war period. He wanted to create a new urban scheme, so he invited numerous architects from all over the world, however he failed. The competition was won by a Slovakian team but their plans never came to realisation. This is something I can vividly recall: a mayor acting as an architect.

I. W.: Because I read a little bit more how eccentric he actually was. Sort of an artist appearing on rather a bureaucratic stage.

I. R.: …wearing a scarf and looking like a bohemian. He was completely different than everybody else in the Communist Party. But obviously this very Communist Party needed such characters for purely representative purposes.

I. W.: So what happened then?

I. R.: We should consider the image and the connotations of such appearance in public space. Bogdanović was also the founder of “Alternative School for Philosophy of Architecture”. It was something like a hippie commune back in the 1970s. Of course many representatives of the establishment were sceptical towards this kind of experiment, but he managed to develop a very interesting concept by working with his students in the course of these lessons, designing urban schemes by referring to pre-historical and ancient civilizations, primeval techniques, etc. – it is a further aspect of his activity. I also have to stress that he was backed by the top representatives of the Communist party, whereas he did have conflicts and misunderstandings on a lower political level.

I. W.: In the monuments, there is a fine play he is trying… we are still… Tito dies when?

I. R.: 1980.

I. W.: 1980. So the whole idea of these cemeteries is a very fine play with combining also various ethnicities into Yugoslav context, right?

I. R.: On a supra-national level, of course.

I. W.: It’s again kind of breaking up into nationalities, which then happens I guess with Milošević. Maybe you could mention a bit about this too… moments where he starts to change his role basically from the kind of architect-politician, his departure from politics.

I. R.: On the 8th congress of Serbian Communist Party in 1987, the Bolshevist wing prevailed and Bogdanović and his friends were more or less overthrown. This is what made him write a letter to the Central committee of the Communist Party, in which he basically analysed its neo-stalinist language, not the policy. He applied an extremely thorough method and many people could not really understand what the content of that letter was, but still, he was someone who publicly opposed the new bolshevist tendencies, so he was thrown out of the party. This is how he became a dissident in a “classical” sense only at a very late stage. It all happened in the late 1980s, just few years before the decline of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Simultaneously he criticized nationalist tendencies within the regional communist parties. The biggest bolshevists turned out to be the biggest nationalists – not only in Serbia – and this is what led to war conflicts in the rest of Yugoslavia. This is something he was consequently opposed to from the very beginning.

I. W.: It’s fascinating to go into this, but maybe we should also open it up. We should also mention the books that came later, which you could say also was one era of political dissidence, when he decided to write.

I. R.: He had written a number of books before, like for example “Futile Trowel” published in 1963 and misunderstood by most of the readers. For his contemporaries from architecture sphere, Bogdanović was much too esoteric and playful, whereas for common reader he was too ‘high-brow’. This is why I talk about ‘being respectfully ignored’. He began writing books as soon as in 1950s, but he wrote some of his most important books in 1990s, in which he mainly criticized the nationalism and its effects by reflecting on the destiny of the city, as he always argued that the city destroyers were actually the biggest criminals in ex-Yugoslavia. If you want to destroy a culture, you have to destroy a city. It’s not by chance that we are talking about synonyms – civitas is culture, or civilization, and the city at the same time. This was exactly what he referred to. He also considered a city a “person” with its habits, customs, psychology, eroticism and all the other features belonging to the compendium of a so-called identity. Eventually Bogdanović he was forced to leave Belgrade and to settle down in Austria in 1993.

I. W.: Can you tell us a bit more about him as an educator?

I. R.: He was the most popular professor on the faculty of architecture in Belgrade due to his unconventional teaching methods. He gave lectures about the history of the city in the 1960s. Later he was also the dean of that faculty. In this function he tried to reform the university in the early 1970s according to some devices which have much in common with today’s Bologna system. But he failed, as the criticism from the Communist Party was much too strong. He also had to face criticism which came from his own colleagues, so he actually had to resign as dean. Couple of years later he decided to found an esoteric school outside of Belgrade for smaller circle of students. This is probably how he became a dissident within the architectural practice before becoming a political dissident.

I. W.: When was it, the Village school?

I. R.: He gave some initial courses, called “The symbolical shapes” from 1973 and he settled down with this course in a remote village in 1976. It existed until 1990 and it was demolished by some policemen who were probably engaged by Slobodan Milošević.

I. W.: Thank you very much Ivan, it was a wonderful talk.