Urban Futures 2015 | tutors: Maroš Krivý, Toomas Adrikorn | EKA, Urban Studies The Expansion of Stagnation (the future of heritage preservation in Tallinn) Lívia Gažová
Heritage preservation nowadys significantly changes the cityscape. Or better to say conserves it thus destroying its natural evolvement. In these days however, the heritage protection is changing too, heading into inflation. We started to protect whole areas, landscapes, or even customs and ways of living. The stagnation is praised and justified by the public at large following the expansion of fears from upcoming future. Aims of planners to create a sustainable, smart city often hit the restrictions imposed by heritage preservation authorities whose empirical methods seem to be above all the plans. In Tallinn, a city lacking concrete vision for the city centre with handful of modern architecture monuments, the protection movement can gain high importance in the future.
But what are the actual methods to preserve openness, repetitivness? How to preserve mass produced buildings with no signs of uniqueness? One of the approaches could be adding the value of intangible heritage into the set preservation parameters. In this manner, we would be able to protect the impalpable qualities too, such as atmospheres, plans, ideas behind, scale, monofunctionality, unfinishness etc. This approach would then allow only interventions that would not oppose the initial plan whose parameters would be set by the heritage preservation groups may it be the preference of cars (Viru square case study), representational character (Ravala street case study) or streetscape (Narva road case study). In this way, the heritage protection could actually replace the missing general plan for the city centre of Tallinn.
As well as Saarinen sought ways to make the city smarter – in the layout, transportation, arrangement of functions, subcentres – the planners nowadays are following a similar logic. They (claim to) aim to make the city more compact, environmentally friendly, resilient, yet implementing contemporary technologies. Meanwhile however, the power of heritage preservation have grown to that extent that if Saarinen`s plan envisioned the new city around the protected zone of the Old Town, today planners have to realize their visions actually only within the areas regarded as protected. Keeping the certain places untouched in this manner restrict the natural growth and replacement of obsolete structures within the city.
protected areas within Tallinn >
map of Stalinist buildings within Tallinn as possible candidates for pretection >
^ excerpts from the book by Rem Koolhaas: Preservation is overtaking us
^ timeline of preservation
In these days the character of heritage protection is changing. Some say that there is some sort of inflation of preservation. Preservation lacks theoretical approach and destroys natural evolvement by consciously keeping the status quo. Its actions are justified by public as these organizations are protecting us from "the uncertain future, preserving our heritage for future generations� which are facts nobody can object. Also the scale has changed, from preservation of single monuments we came to protection of whole areas, landscapes, milieu or even customs or way of living. We protect Vienese cafÊ culture, Portugese songs or complex of caves in France. We are protecting
objects still younger and in a short time we can reach the peak of preservation when preservation would become prospective instead of retrospective and we will set preservation rule to newly built architecture. That`s why I called my project The Expansion of Stagnation. There are several reasons for this growth of power of heritage preservation groups. For instance the convenient rejection of responsibility of decision-making by politicians. As a result, their only plan for the future is based on past. The other can be the general mood of nostalgia and doubts about future among society. As well this might be a reaction to current fetishizing of technologies.
According to observation, the buildings that are approximately 50-80 years old are becoming protected. This implies that the new adepts for the preservation in Tallinn are after-war architecture objects, Stalinist style architecture, panel blocks, khrushchevky and so forth. It is apparent that they carry different qualities than traditional architecture we preserve now. In these days in order to preserve something, the thing needs to have a feature of uniqueness, of something extraordinary, it needs to have a set of values. But in the cases of generic architecture so common in former soviet countries, this character is missing. The architecture that had been mass produced is repetetive and seemingly without a feature a real uniqueness. What we are going to preserve in their case: the composition, the geometry, the actual objects, details, plans or even atmosphere?
This implies that in general we cannot really apply only the common methods of heritage preservation on mass produced architecture. One of the possible answers to this problem might be adding the preservation of intangible heritage into the set of protection rules. Preservation of atmospheres, non-architectural values such as impression, influence, relations, representation of a certain period etc. In the future much more attention than to actual structures would be given to understanding the ideas behind the existing forms thus explaining their values. Each building or area would then require individual approach in restoration that would allow preserving categories as for example the emptiness, scale, openness, monofunctionality, street character etc. This approach would then allow interventions but only those ones which are not in the opposition of the initial plan.
^ imaginary newspaper article showing shift in the taste of citizens as property owners
^ design proposal for Ravala street from 1940s
^ current state of the end of Ravala street In the future it can be imposed by heritage preservation authorities that in order to keep the representational character of Ravala street, there should be only certain kind of building usage allowed. Or, if somebody would have an intension to build something in the end, it would be preferred that the building would follow the logic of the initial plan that proposed the extension of the street to Parnu mnt. This will not be something new in the area, it has happened already that the new building construction is respecting the logic stated by existing street axis. It is questionable for me, what would happen behind the facades of the existing houses. I assume that the attention would be paid to the look from the outside, from the sight of pedestrian on the street.
^ the original design of Narva maantee from 1950s
^ current state of Narva road, 2015
If there is a necessity to develop or reconstruct Narva road in the future, the heritage preservation groups may intervene in the design process. They could state what are the values the planners need to take into account. The values can be different: the look of the street, its dimentsion, traffic arrangement, preference of cars, height of buildings, representative character or maybe even the car fumes, or noise. Or would the imperfectness considered as a typical value in Tallinn? The noises, smells, the mess? The population ratio?
^ current state of the square, 2015
^ original planning model of Viru Square from 1966
suggestive rendering depicting new look of Viru Square, TAB vision competition 2015 >
Let`s imagine that the outcome of the vision competition for Viru Square would be a design in a sort of Copenhagen style and would be likely to become realized. The preservation groups would object that by adding this “cultural layer� the atmosphere would be destroyed. Instead, in case of reconstruction the space should be given back its initial modernist look.
< possible design outcomes after the intervention of heritage preservation groups
The growing importance of heritage preservation in the cities nowadays, its justified position in actual building process and resposibility for crucial decisions make heritage protection organizations powerful tools to protect the building form and to impose regulations without having a real opposition. In case of Tallinn the heritage protection could actually replace the missing general plan for the city centre. Given the power of preservation would not be limited we might reach the peak of preservation when new forms would be no longer relevant because the preservation would create relevence even without new. This could be the end of the new.
references: Snopek, Kuba: Preserving the Generic. Strelka Press. 2013 Koolhaas, Rem: Preservation is overtaking us. IN: Future Anterior Volume 1, Number 2 Fall 2004 Derlos, Maria: UNESCO and Tallinn Old Town: Acting at the Distance. Estonian Academy of Arts, student research paper, 2013 Preservation. Research Report. Studio "Preservation Next" led by Rem Koolhaas at Strelka 2012 Hollands, Robert: Will the real smart cities please stand up? IN: City, Nov. 2008 Tallinn Development Plan 2014-2020 http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/822
^ final presentation installation 6th May 2015