Spaces of Criticism and Imagination: Exhibitions, Publications and Exchanges of Latvian and Estonian Architects and Artists in 1978–1979
Spaces of Criticism and Imagination: Exhibitions, Publications and Exchanges of Latvian and Estonian Architects and Artists in 1978–1979

Summary/Abstract: The article contributes to Baltic regional and transnational art history by focusing on exchanges, collaborations, mutual influences and shared concerns of Latvian and Estonian artists, architects and designers at the end of the 1970s. It examines exhibitions and press publications as public platforms that during the late socialism allowed to communicate innovative ideas on architecture and spatial design and to manifest criticism of standardisation and uniformity of Soviet modernist architecture and centralised planning. Presented in exhibitions and press publications conceptual projects developed by architects, designers and artists raised urgent questions about the quality of urban environment, heterogeneity of the city space and its relation to issues of belonging, ecological dimensions of urban development, communicative forms of environmental design, contextualism and preservation of regional architectural heritage and landscapes.

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