A RECAP OF TALLINN ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2013 RECYCLING

SOCIALISM
The opening event of the TAB 2013 Curators’ Exhibition in the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (a modernist/Soviet landmark highrise in Tallinn, originally built as the
headquarters of the Communist Party) on September 6th, 2013. Temporary staircase
designed by Tomomi Hayashi leading to the so-called Sprat-Tin Hall of the Ministry of
Foreign Af fairs building where the Curators’ Exhibition took place. Image ©TonuTunnel
Modernism and socialism formed the pow erful spacio -political tandem of the 20th
century that shaped much of the urban and rural environments of Central and Eastern
Europe, including Estonia and its capital Tallinn. Those environments are still there –
ike fossils of paradigms, one declared dead, the other exiled. Today we consider them
as nothing more than a collection of somewhat interesting material substances or
formal oddities – after all, we would rather like to believe this era is not relevant to us
today. But is there more to those fossils that we’re not examining?
The architects and researchers that were brought together by the Tallinn Architecture
Biennale raised interesting discussion and questions that showed how much inter twined
history (in this case, the 1960s to the 1980s) and historical ideas are still with us
today, especially in a world where freedom might be just as illusional as it was back
then.