REPLACEMENT OF URBAN SPACE: ESTONIAN POST-WAR TOWN PLANNING PRINCIPLES AND LOCAL STALINIST INDUSTRIAL TOWNS

Siim Sultson

doi:10.3846/20297955.2016.1247999

Abstract

The presented paper focuses on Estonian urban space research concerning both replacement of urban heritage and establishment of new urban design within the period of mid 1940s and 1950s. On the one hand, Stalinist principles brought by Soviet occupation reminded independent Estonian 1930s town planning ambitions. On the other hand, the new principles formulated a new paradigm that was unfamiliar to local urban space tradition. Estonian urban space was compelled to follow the Soviet doctrine by concept, forms and building materials. Sometimes suffering irrational demolitions the towns got axially arranged representative, but perspective and functional plans. Some existing towns (for instance Tallinn, Pärnu, Narva) got new centres due to war wreckages and the ideological reasons. Meanwhile new industrial towns as examples of Stalinist utopia were built in East-Estonia during 1940s–1950s in order to exploit local mineral resources by the Soviet regime. In comparison with Tallinn and Pärnu urban space of East-Estonian industrial towns Kohtla-Järve and classified Sillamäe – designed in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) – still need to be researched. Though different from the rest of Estonian towns by details and materials of façades city-like centres of Sillamäe and Kohtla-Järve are rather similar to Tallinn and Pärnu by their composition.

Highlights

Town planning and city space within it may be taken somehow as information communication technology
Current analysis of Estonian post-war city planning and urban space has mostly consisted of juxtaposition of graphic material, buildings without penetrating the issue – whence and why everything has come, what were the reasons, what was the context
Due to the fact Sillamäe and Kohtla-Järve are not planned by local architects, their appearance differ appearance of the rest of Estonian towns, Stalinist appearance the East-Estonian Stalinist industrial towns are still considered different, unfamiliar, exotic, as from parallel dimension in Estonia

Summary

Introduction

Town planning and city space within it may be taken somehow as information communication technology. In 1945 the head of the Stately Committee of Architecture of the USSR Arkadi Mordvinov formulated seven principle conditions of the Soviet post-war town planning that were compulsory for all architects: 1) town planning was supposed to be in tight connection with natural environment in order to expose its beauty; 2) town plan needed balanced compositional centre (for instance centre – main street – railway station square); 3) monumental public buildings had to be erected in junctions; 4) quarters of dwelling houses had to be planned in complex way and designed in one ensemble; 5) all buildings had to be painted only in light colours (dream of positive future); 6) rationality and high quality of structures and infrastructures (electricity, water supply etc.) were must; 7) thorough quality survey both in architects’ projects and building process was inevitable (Kosenkova 2009: 42). Mordvi novs seven principles and both of them were mandatory to be followed by local urban planners, architects

The new policy in Tallinn and Pärnu

Conclusions