Neīstenotais Aleksandrs Klinklāvs
"Unrealised" Aleksandrs Klinklāvs

Summary/Abstract: The architect Aleksandrs Klinklāvs' contribution to the architecture of Latvia in the 1930s is topical and his personality merits serious interest from different viewpoints. Klinklavs belonged to the first generation of Latvian architects that acquired professional education at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Latvia in the early 1930s. He was considered to be the most outstanding student of the professor Ernests Štālbergs' master class where Klinklāvs adopted Functionalism and became one of the leading promoters of this style in Latvia's modern architecture. Klinklāvs' professional activities in the Republic ofLatvia took place in the decade 1929-1939, when, after graduation from the University in 1930, he supervised the Technical Department of the Latvian Red Cross and simultaneously set up a private building company, both for the next 10 years. During this period, Klinklavs designed and supervised more than 30 different projects, like public houses, government buildings, offfice and residential houses, private villas and factories, both realised and unrealised. The architect can be deservedly praised as the best expert in the building of medical institutions among his Latvian contemporaries as these projects have outnumbered other functional groups. After the Second World War, Klinklavs successfully expanded his creative activiities in Canada (Montreal, 1948-1959) and the United States (Chicago, 1959-1982), where he has designed some 18 public buildings - medical institutions, hotels, bank and office buildings, commercial centres and even a church. Klinklavs' name has become almost proverbial in two main aspects of his creative work - as a professional specialist in health care architecture and experienced and successful architect in architectural competitions where he regularly won the first prizes. "Unrealised" as the key word of the article's title points to the author's wish to discuss those both nationally and architecturally important large-scale projects, for which Klinklavs got the first prizes and high appreciation in competitions but which have never been carried out or realised according to the architect's initial idea.

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