A Former Soviet Airstrip in the Service of Estonian Cultural History
In 2005 the Estonian government decided to stage an international competition as a means of selecting a design for a new National Estonian Museum. Since there was already a Museum of Estonian History in Tallinn, the capital, one might assume that this was one factor in the decision to locate it in the second largest city, Tartu. One might ask, ‘why is this such a big deal, when we are only talking about a small country with a population of less than two million?’
Since this museum’s emphasis is heavily weighted toward illustrating the country’s finno-ugric origins, both in language and tribally, Estonia’s Russian neighbor could hardly interpret this as a friendly gesture—considering over forty percent of Estonia’s population is currently Russian. It wasn’t always that way. Russian influence and the migration of Russian speakers to Finland coincided with the end of World War II and the Cold War. Estonia’s attraction to Russians during that era was not only linked to the region as a hightech center; with that came a slightly higher living standard.
When the breakup of the Soviet Union and the simultaneous recreation of independent Baltic States occurred in 1989, the Estonian majority took power, and concurrently, made Estonian the official language of the country. If this wasn’t enough, its cultural positioning to Finland and the West has intensified with its membership in the EU and NATO. Since then, a delicate balance has been struck between the two cultures; but the rise of Russian nationalism under Putin could spell trouble internally for the country. Nationalism is okay for Moscow, but dangerous when occurring in a neighboring country—especially when it is a former Soviet Republic.
The Site
The site of the new museum, an abandoned Soviet military airstrip outside of Tartu, also has symbolic meaning. That the winning design used the airstrip to draw attention to the departure of the Russians could hardly sit well with their neighbor to the east. It was a strong statement of Estonian identity with cultural ties to the west dating back centuries as members of the Hanseatic League.
As Aaron Betsky noted in his article for the Fall Issue of COMPETITIONS magazine in 2007, commenting on the role of “architecture as a powerful tool in the service of the state…architecture can use place above all else for meaning.”
In this competition, the winners, DGT (Paris/London), fully understood the site, its implications, and the challenges it presented. At first glance, their visually simple solution could be interpreted as less about architectural symbolism, than providing a flexible, sleek container as a solution to the program. But by integrating the structure so symbolically with the runway, the message could only be: That element of history is behind us forever and has been supplanted by a connection to our finno-ugric past, building on that for a better future—as represented by a modern structure.
As reported in Betsky’s article, DGT’s design was pretty controversial; not only was it a split decision by the jury, Dutch juror Winy Maas (MVDRV) had to return to Estonia later to offer support for the jury’s choice. In the end, the DGT design was implemented, and finally dedicated last year. From our vantage point, this project, though located in what some might consider a ‘no-mans-land,’ will certainly stand as one of the most remarkable museum projects of the early 21st Century.
In July 2019 the Vilnius Concert Hall competition jury began its deliberations to identify a suitable design for this major performing arts project. As one might have anticipated, two of thejurors on the seven member panel, Ole Gustavsen (Snohetta) and Andreas Cukrowicz (Nachbaur Architekten) had won high profile competitions for similar music center projects—in Oslo and Munich.The jury was confronted with a formidable task, as the competition, organized according to UIA regulations and anonymous in its format, had attracted 248 entries from around the world. For this one-stage competition, the organizers listed the following evaluation criteria, whereby the order of the criteria was not to reflect any priority:
Form and Dichroic Light Scott Hall at Carnegie Mellon University Michelle LaFoe and Isaac Campbell OFFICE 52 Architecture Forward by Cesar Pelli, FAIA Introduction by Michael J. Crosbie, FAIA Leete”s Island Books, Maine USA Hard cover; 96 pages in color ISBN 9780918172709
In his introduction to Form and Dichroic LIght, Michael Crosbie never mentions the term, “wild card,” to describe Office 52’s participation in the invited competition for the Carnegie Mellon Engineering Building. The four finalists, picked from a list of 17 firms, also included three household names: ZGF, Wilson, and BCJ (Bohlin Cywinski, Jackson). So what possible chance could a firm, which had just recently opened a small office in Portland, Oregon, have against a competition lineup of this magnitude? But as OFFICE 52 Principal, Isaac Campbell explained, as a small firm, “we were quite nimble,” and the $50,000 stipend the firms all received to produce a design could allow OFFICE 52 more time to undertake the research involved than might be the case with a larger office, where a cost controller is constantly focusing on the operation.
Memorials to commemorate atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II have taken many forms. Holocaust museums such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. by Pei Cobb Freed or the Jewish Museum in Berlin by Daniel Libeskind, all endeavor to paint a broad picture, including narratives covering most of the major events and sites. Former concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Dachau, Theresienstadt and Buchenwald have been frequent tour destinations. In the case of Buchenwald, the local city of Weimar has placed pictures of “Witnesses” throughout the downtown area as a reminder of the Nazi legacy.
Detroit’s Dia Plaza competition is hardly unique in initiating a search for urbanistic solutions to a cultural cluster. Vienna, Berlin, Mesa, Fort Worth, Chicago’s Millennium Park and Paris’ Parc de la Villette are just a few examples of projects where the focus on spaces between buildings, and arriving at a connective plan to infuse new energy into the site, has been the primary goal of other projects. All of these have been faced with their own challenges: solutions for some have been relatively simple—Vienna’s Museum Quarter and Berlin’s Forum—while others such as Paris’ La Villette and Mesa’s Downtown Plaza represent a more challenging subject spatially. In the case of Detroit, the aim of the competition was clear: “The design competition centers around enhancing and enlivening the DIA’s exterior campus and aims to connect all the institutions with a beautiful series of settings that support all types of programming and public art.”
Milton Keynes, known simply as MK, represented one of the more significant results of the UK’s “new town” programs from the 1950s and 60s. Situated almost equidistant between Oxford and Cambridge, and within easy access from London, the city had everything one might expect from a modern community—except a university. For a city having a population exceeding 250,000, and projected to have 500,000 inhabitants by 2050, that will all change, as a competition supported by the MK Council (MKC) and Cranfield University has resulted in five firms competing for the opportunity to design a higher educational institution to eventually accommodate 15,000 students.
If cities in the U.S. are anticipating funding from government entities to solve a dire need for affordable housing, they should be prepared for a long wait. The national government, a traditional source of funds for such projects, has shown little if no interest in the issue, and state and local sources are at a minimum. To exacerbate the problem, the construction cost of affordable housing has risen exponentially the the past few decades. Gone are those days when architects such as Oakland-based Michael Pyatok could build affordable housing for $100 a square foot.
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